This Blog is Finished

I once said it's "On like Donkey Kong," but now it's Off Like Boris Karloff.  That's right folks, this blog has run its course.  The momentum has been waning for a while, and now it's official.  This blog is done.  It's over.  Sayonara.  So long.  It's been good to know you.

But don't get weepy (I just can't take the tears), take heart.  I will be opening a new, bigger, better (and maybe even occasionally visited) blog:

The Field Guide For The Freakishly Tall

details to follow...

And now for something completely different:  A passing fancy.

 

Terrorists

The turtles lifted their scrotum-like heads, and the young beavers danced, and the pelicans stuffed their robust gullets, and it was at this moment, and only this moment that the red-headed woman spoke of the terrorists.  The fanfare of the fauna resulted not from slender chance, for the lesser beings understood a certain law of nature.  Even those with abundant grey matter and opposing thumbs are bound by the principles of the wild.  Yes, even humans, stately in the upright posture, are prone to bestial acts.

Wine Country

http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2012/09/05/wine-country-the-rap-video-that-will-make-your-day/


Put on your Raiders cap and start pressing grapes.

21 Things About Me

1. I am taller than the average bear.
2. I can juggle.
3. I received my B.A in econ from UCI.
4. A big blue ball came from the sky and made me tall (there is photographic evidence).
5. I practice good hygiene.
6. I require stitches every few years.
7. Several years ago I was younger.
8. I’ve served cocktails to celebrities.
9. When I was a child I wanted to be a poet (I assumed people were paid to do such things).
10. When I was 24 I won $75 in a poetry contest. 
11. The poem which was called "The Slight Remorse of  an Uncooked Soul" burned up when my house burned down (A German translation still exists).
12. I watched my house burn down on TV in 1993.
13. I am not the David Womack you find on Google.
14. The David Womack available via Google is presumably much cooler.
15. One summer I lived in my van, not because I had to, I just thought it would be cool.
16. I used to be an avid windsurfer; now I do crossword puzzles.  My dream is to be able to do both these activities, although not necessarily simultaneously.
17. I lived in Berlin but didn’t cross dress.
18. I’ve never been to France.
19. I’m allergic to milk but am able to eat cheese.  I like cheese.
20. I am allergic to penicillin, and that is nothing to clap about.
21. I live atop a hill, a few blocks from the ocean, in a small house with thin walls and clumsy decor.

Ping

The pale moon shimmers

like a forgotten Hula Dancer across

the lines of the expansive

Pacific.  Beckoning. Unmatched.

Timeless as my Hawaiian vacation.

Until slight interruption.  Ping.

“Call me when you get this.”

Betty Only Needs One II

David Womack

Betty Only Needs One

I grew up on Glenwood Drive.  It was a wide tree-lined street, the kind you see in real estate brochures and Norman Rockwell paintings.   The houses in my neighborhood seemed bound by the specific principles of suburban architecture.  Every home had a matching lawn - spacious and fertilized, water and mowed. Every home had a two-car garage.

Nearly every home contained a family as well.  On school day afternoons, or in the cool twilight hours after hot summer days, a small herd of children often convened on the street.  Glenwood Drive was our street, and a great place to kick balls, ride bikes and play tag.  The world of our street was friendly and familiar; cars slowed and waved when they passed.  We were surrounded by people we knew- families, friends, and friends of friends.  Our street was our extended home and, even though we all obediently went inside when the streetlights came on, we knew it was a safe place.

Below our street were smaller tree-lined streets with residences not bound by the uniform standards of our suburban enclave.   The world of these streets seemed more compact than that of Glenwood Drive.  Single-family homes stood between duplexes and triplexes. There were small stucco apartment courts and older, gabled houses that had been converted into rental units.  A few families raised their children there, but most of the living situations were more fluid, homes with roommates or young couples - short timers – people we did not know.  These “other” streets only lacked the glossy veneer of Glenwood Drive, by any proper standard the residences were well kept.  However, nearly every block seemed to contain one anomaly, one house that would stick out, an eyesore with broken screens, chipped paint and rusty cars parked on the lawn.  These were the houses where loud music blared out of balcony windows, and where people seemed to come and go through all hours of the day.  These houses were, according to our parents, where the hippies lived.

I doubt my parents, or most of the neighborhood parents, had much of a concept of what hippies were. They probably took their profile from the Seven O' Clock news: Hippies took drugs, lived in communes, had naked babies, and took their hygiene cues from the Bronze Age.  Hippies had ideas that did not conform to the safe, suburban ideal.  As a child I took this all at face value. My world consisted of dirt clods, kickball and riding my bike, I didn't have much time to learn about free love. So when I passed a house with too many cars out front, with music blaring or with incense burning, I kept walking.  Glenwood Drive was where I idled my time. Nothing below my street really sparked my interest.  I was not judgmental; I was just concentrated on the spritely activities of youth.  I was not an elitist; I was just a tag player, a bike rider and a ball kicker.  I never gave much thought to the hippies until the chalkboard showed up.

Now, to be fair, I don't even know if the chalkboard was in front of one of the so-called hippie houses. I do remember exactly where the chalkboard stood (for those of you keeping track on Google, it was on the corner of 11th and Pine in Riverside, CA), but I know nothing about the occupants of the house.  They were people with a chalkboard and something to say.  We never met them. We never saw them. We just drove by their yard and saw their daily message.

The first message I remember reading was: “Only 170 Days to Christmas.”  To my eleven-year-old sensibility, the message seemed funny because it was presented on a hot July day.  Summer vacation was eons away from Christmas and presents and winter.  It never occurred to me that the chalkboard was taking a swipe at the tidy orthodoxy of our world, and the obedient consumer culture that that orthodoxy spawned.  The purveyors of the chalkboard were not bound the rules of our suburban contract.  Their world did not revolve around having a perfectly manicured lawn, or making sure that their garage door was kept closed after the dinner hour.  On subsequent days, there were other clever messages about pop culture and consumer culture, and what it meant to erect a chalkboard on a residential street corner.  The messages may have represented an alternative point of view, but they were tongue in cheek.  I'm not certain, but it seemed no one minded the messages in the beginning.

I always looked forward to the chalked notices. They seemed to be a window on a world I knew nothing about. My father also admired the chalkboard. It was obvious he liked the easy humor of the messages - he was never one to stray from a joke or a witty remark – but I’d also like to think he valued the chalkboard as a mechanism for free speech. Our family car trips always seemed to bring us past that corner. Dad would often read the messages aloud, just to make sure we were all privy to the quip.

Over time the tone of the messages seemed to change. What was once innocuous became more overtly political, and perhaps a bit controversial. This was the post-Watergate era, and politicians were ripe for skewering (as they still are today, but in the 70's there were no blogs, no twitter and no TV chalking Glenn Beck for that matter.). The keepers of the chalkboard had positions and beliefs. They had a voice, and it often countered the period’s official "party line.”  Gerald Ford was in office and our country was involved in sloganeering. Perhaps this is what Nixon had learned by going to China. We had new slogans for every new cause: we were "Whipping Inflation Now," "Beating the Energy Crisis" and doing something or another to the Vietnamese. The chalkboard had it's own less-traveled propaganda, seemingly made up by the chalkboard writers. I can't remember much about the anti-slogans, I was only eleven, but I know they were subversive because people started talking and people started complaining. Apparently, making fun of the weather was covered under the 1st Amendment, but posting political messages on the street corner broke some sort of zoning laws.

I do have a clear memory of one particularly pointed chalkboard headline. It was posted on a sunny summer day. We drove by it as we went to church. The chalkboard read: "Betty Only Needs One." I did not get the meaning until my sister explained - Betty Ford had just had a mastectomy. My mother complained. She thought the message was mean spirited. When I tried to defend the chalkboard (I always sided with the chalkboard), she wouldn't hear it. Mom was firm in her belief that such matters weren't to be taken lightly. She was particularly sensitive about the issue because her mother had just had a mastectomy as well. She knew the truth up close and personal: Breast cancer is ridiculously awful. The mastectomy is a painful operation (probably even worse then) for any woman - trading a chunk of your body to save your life. As a child I did not fully understand these consequences, but I knew one thing: Beside my grandmother, Betty Ford was the only woman I knew who had had the surgery. Betty Ford's surgery was all over the news. We watched updates every night during the dinner hour.

Betty Ford may have had the first public mastectomy. I'm sure that was difficult for her, and I understand my mother's inclination to decry the "easy" humor of the chalkboard. However, I'm not sure the message was mean spirited. It didn't say, "Betty Only Has One," it said "Needs." In the pageantry of the public eye, all players must somehow be perfect, and whole. It is hard to be perfect when surgeons just ripped off part of your body. Betty kept going, she went public, and she stayed strong. She kept up her end of the bargain even after fate gave her a difficult choice. I'd like to think the keepers of the chalkboard were celebrating Betty. Even though they decried the politics of Nixon, and satirized the stultifying slogans of the Ford administration, I hope they could still find a bit of sympathy for Betty.

The chalkboard did not survive the summer, let alone the Ford administration. I heard there were official complaints - people always decried the work of the so-called hippies.  Eventually, there was some action by the city.  The chalkboard disappeared one day, another short-time resident on those “other” streets.

 Betty Ford did survive. She survived cancer and addiction (and who knows what else) until she died on July 8 at the age of 94.  If I had my own chalkboard today, I certainly would not be an apologist for the Ford or Nixon administration.  But on the day that Betty Ford departed, I would have put aside political feelings and remembered the strength of that woman.  My chalkboard might have read:  “Betty Was One We Needed.”

Always Chasing Rainbows

My story "Always Chasing Rainbows" will be featured on Fiction 365 on July 11.  That's tomorrow!

www.fiction365.com

Refuse Refusal

Insight of the day:  One man's junk is another man's shit I'll take care of later.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Sorry for the scary photo, but I just had a memory from long ago.  When I was in high-school and, consequently, a pot-smoking hooligan, I encountered Tammy Faye at a 31 Flavors.  I was with friends and, of course, stoned, and, of course, consuming big quantities of ice cream.  This was before Tammy and Jim were famous, but I had seen them once on cable.  On their cable show they played Led Zeppelin albums backwards, and had a guest (an expert!) who detailed the demonic elements of the Eagle's Hotel California.  Don Henley, really?  My friends were not hip to the televangelists, but I clued them in.  I told them the whole story of their holier-than-thou Led Zeppelin desecration (we were fans of the Zep.).  Then we stared a bit at the freakish religious zealots, all the while trying to be discreet (did I mention that we were stoned?).  Finally, when Tammy and Jim left we  picked up their garbage (yes we did!), and RELISHED the fact that three high school potheads were better people than TV famous (OK, only cable) preachers.

Ten years later I made a film about TV preachers titled Christ Stopped at Bakersfield.  You have probably never seen it because, like all my films, no one has.  But CSAB feature me as the victim of a callous televangelist.  I played a man who was persuaded (suckered) by his wife to give money to a money-grubbing preacher.  The film was shot on location in El Morro Trailer Park and featured Me, Shawn Gray as the preacher, and some neighbor as my fictional wife's voice (she was never seen on camera).  It also featured on old Chevy Nova which was supposed to be my car, the car I wanted to repair but couldn't because I had to send money to the preacher.

So, if you are having trouble following the thread of this post let me recap:  Televangelists are not good for America because 1)they don't pick up after themselves and 2) they take money away from hard working auto mechanics.

Piranhas

Whitney: The piranhas...
Buck Gardner: What about the goddamn piranhas?
Whitney: They're eating the guests, sir.

NYE 1983 - The Dead Kennedys

The show was  in N. Hollywood.  I was 20 years-old and didn't have a car, so I rode up from Newport with my neighbors Jeff and Lisa.  My friend Rodney came as well. ( I haven't seen any of these folks in more than 20 years, and can't believe I even remember their names).  The  Starlite Ballroom on Lankershim seemed more like a dungeon than concert venue.  The ceiling was only about 8 feet high and the place was packed...and hot.  It was only my second or third punk show, so I was unsure of the whole experience, and maybe even a bit intimidated by the rowdy crowd.  And I was hot.  By the time the Butthole Surfers took the stage, people were jumping up and punching out the fire sprinklers - breaking them so they would release water.  Every time one broke the crowd would push and squeeze toward the fountain of cooling water.  We were all that hot and sweaty.

I should also mention that the ceiling obscured part of the stage, and the performers, if standing, were cut off at the torso.  Gibby Haines of the BH Surfers, came out in with shaving cream all over his head and clothespins attached to his natty hair.  He was a nut.  At the time I was listening to Another Man's Sack and tracks like "The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave,"  but I wasn't prepared for the Butthole's aural onslaught - two drummers  pounding out tribal rhythms,  with layers of distorted guitar, and Gibby's delirious vocals.  It was like being in a drum circle at an asylum.  An asylum were all the inhabitants were art-affected schizoid slam dancers.  For some reason I lost my friends in the crowd, and was alone, bouncing around in the wild scene.

When the Dead Kennedys came on, the level of chaos increased.  Jello bent down under the low ceiling and incited the crowd.  It was 1984.  Every punk's symbol of totalitarian rule.  This was an overarching theme in the DK's music, and they were playing it for all it was worth -  The stage turned into a melee zone, and there were, at times, so many people rushing the stage, I couldn't see the band.  Jello was dog piled by the rowdy crowd.  At times the only evidence of his presence on stage was his mic chord, extending out from a pile of punks.  Somehow he kept singing.  It seemed he kept singing while crushed under the weight of thirty bodies.  It was a sight to behold.  I doubt there are many performers who could survive in those conditions - Jello survived and he seemed to relish it.

This is all I remember from the show.  I went into the show a bit uneasy, and nervous.  I'm not sure if my feelings were justified, but I was unsure about a lot of things those days.  I was entering an entirely new social realm - a fairly chaotic one.  Some of the uneasiness went away when I smoked pot with strangers in the crowd.  For a while I though everything would be groovy, and that the rumors about the rowdy LA Punk scene were just that.  But when the music started, things changed.   The easy-going camaraderie turned to frenzied chaos. - people flew and pushed and collided - and it was nonstop, and hot, and sweaty, and completely out of control.  I wasn't just a witness, I was right in the fray, which made me more uneasy - uneasy, unsure and stoned!   But being in the fray meant there was nothing to do but adapt and, eventually, I bounced and collided, and flew without control.   There was no other choice; I was forced to assimilate. By the end of the show,  I was sweaty and exhausted, overwhelmed but not uneasy.   It was so long ago, nearly thirty years, but some of the images remain.

Brazilian Butt Lift

Remember those days before mobile phones?  The days when people ate quietly in restaurants - sipped their drinks, read the newspaper, watched TV, maybe even talked to others around them.  Today cell phones are so pervasive that most people either don't care, or are not aware, that others can tune into their conversations.

The Fantasy

Yesterday I was having lunch, sitting at the bar in a local restaurant.  There was one other patron at the bar, a woman, who spent the entire time on her cell phone.  I'd never met the woman before, and still don't care to know her name, but I know a lot about her now.  She  had owned a salon, but just sold the business.  It was a business she built from the ground up. She was a very hands-on owner, and seemed a bit torn about letting it go.  Apparently she didn't think the buyer deserved the business, and that he certainly wouldn't appreciated her fine work that went into the business.  It also appears that she is carrying paper on the deal and has some qualms about the financial viability of the buyer.   Perhaps financial viability is wrong.  She is more worried that he might not follow through on the agreement.  The buyer is a plastic surgeon who specializes in the Brazilian Butt Lift procedure. When you overhear someone talking about Brazilian Butt Lifts, it is really difficult to tune out their conversation.   So here it is: the operation involves sucking fat out of the jiggly parts of the  body and transferring it to the buttocks (if the buttocks are not already one of your jiggly parts).  A patient can transform from Twiggy to J-Lo faster than you can say suck, suck, pump (my own embellishment, sorry).  So, rather unexpectedly, not only have I learned about the Brazilian Butt Lift, I know that this strange woman - a fairly attractive, businesslike, mid 40's woman, who never seemed to stop talking - wants one.  Yes, she effectively told me (and everyone else within earshot) that very pearl of information.  She proclaimed that she wants a Brazilian Butt Lift because she has no butt, has never had a butt, and has (apparently) always wanted a butt.  However, she will not get a BBL from the aforementioned Salon buyer because he does not meet her butt lift standards.  Who does?  I'm not sure.  She spoke non-stop and frantically, there was no time for the individual on the other end to ask pertinent questions (The questions I would have asked, and decided to abstain from asking in person.  Which is a moot point because she never got off the phone.).  But did I really need to know more?  She had already brought so much to my "quiet" lunch. 

The Reality

Devastatin' Dave The Turntable Slave

This guy is stealing my thunder.  Sunglasses. Check.  Bike gloves. Check.  Skinny belt.  Check.  Clever rhyming title.   He's got it all.

Farewell To My Dieffenbachia

This may be the day the dieffenbachia died.  At least it is the day it will be retired.  The hardy dieffenbachia was a redwood of a plant, surviving pestilence, and menacing children, and unfriendly relocations.  It survived twenty years in three living rooms.  It survived short jaunts on the highway, and then recovered from an unfriendly sunburn  acquired when my floors were being redone.  It held up against my sword-wielding nephew, shedding leaves but maintaining strong roots.   It lived even as it outgrow its pot, being tied and staked and tied again, its trunks scoliosis-like, too long, and bearing fewer and fewer leaves.  It survived several bouts with nematodes, and all the times I forgot to water.   This was a beast amongst houseplants.  The dieffenbachia stayed with me through thick and thin.  And now I must let it go.

A few years ago I took underexposed photos of this plant for my mountain biking blog.  The dark dieffenbachia served as substitute for the nighttime foliage I encountered when riding my bike.  You may see the photos here.  http://mountainbikeoc.blogspot.com/2009/02/night-riding.html  The photos are unremarkable, but they seem appropriate for this dark day.  Soon my dieffenbachia will be traveling to the dark underbelly of the green waste can, and then, hopefully, back to the earth.

We're So Lucky To Have You

I love holiday cards from businesses and corporations.  Who doesn't?  It's great to here Happy Birthday or Happy Anniversary from the bank.  I almost don't mind that they want to add a fee to my checking account. And well wishes from the electric and gas utilities?  It gets me through the month, running the lights, the jacuzzi, hell, I'm thinking about putting in that extra refrigerator.

This week I received a St. Patrick's day email from my home insurance carrier.  Everyone needs the luck of the Irish to stave off fires and acts of God (not earthquakes though, that would be a different policy!).  The title of the insurers E-card was: We're So Lucky To Have You!  Well, apparently they are so lucky to have me that they decided not to renew my policy.  And why, you might ask, would they not renew the policy of an upstanding citizen like myself.  It's because I have too much debris in front of my house.  When I first heard this I thought about my deck and the banana tree adjoining my house. My outside collection: a bit of deck furniture, two plants and my bicycle.  I didn't think this was too much debris.  So I waited for the inspection report.  Guess what?  They did the inspection while I was moving in.  Yup.  In the inspection photos, my beds, my dresser and my sofa are all stacked up next to the front door.   The report goes on to mention that I live near a slope.  Yes a slope.  My whole neighborhood is on a slope.  Nearly my whole city is on a slope.  It's called Laguna Beach and, yes, we like to celebrate St. Patrick's Day sitting on the sofa that blocks our front door. 

Happy Birthday, Mr. President!

Kennedy philandered his way through Camelot, until he got shot in the face.
Johnson "Lethal Bomb Juggler"  took us to Vietnam, and couldn't face another term
Nixon tricked us out of our innocence, and spied on us, and made the others' war his own, and left in disgrace.
Ford filled in and pardoned, and whipped inflation, and seems to be remembered for his wife.
Carter brought his cronies from the peanut farm, and they in turn brought us...
Reagan, who everybody loves now, but can't seem to remember that he sold arms to terrorists in order to fund an illegal war, and supported regimes that killed nuns, and he let our tax dollars go to bankers (not that that could ever happen again!).
Bush I had his own war, which was relatively successful for our side, but then he paid lip service to the people which led us to...
Clinton who sweet talked us while soiling that pretty blue dress, but we were living between the wars and we re-elected him, and we were Greenspan successful, but that was before the fall
Bush II had to endure a tragedy, then spun the tragedy to promote his crony's war, and to spy on citizens and run the country into debt, and then we went broke, and all we had were more clumsy reasons for war.
Obama offered change (who wouldn't!), but one has to wonder about the possibilities.

These are the presidents of my lifetime.  Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

Bumpersticker of the day:  God Bless North America

T-Shirt idea of the day:  It's Raining Menonites

Vic Chesnutt

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Another Christmas has passed without Vic Chesnutt.  The  date is pertinent because Vic died on Christmas.  He took his own life, and I miss him.   I didn’t know Vic personally, I only knew him through his music.  And certainly the music lives on, but I wish Vic himself was still around, reclining in his wheelchair, somewhere, cracking wry smiles before a audience.

Vic was a darling of Athens, Georgia's music scene. Initially championed by Michael Stipe, Vic went on to make 17 albums.   Because of his health problems, he was also the subject of a Sweet Relief tribute album, a fundraising effort to assist with his medical bills.  The record included covers by Madonna, the Smashing Pumpkins and others.  Many others, Vic kept a core group of dedicated friends, in spite of his cantankerous personality.  He was mouthy but loveable.   His songs were often sad, but they were also honest, filled with imagery that was both magical and concise.  He was a small man, confined to a wheelchair after a drunken car accident, but his words, his lyrics, loomed large. 

I saw Vic in concert three times.  The third time was at the House of Blues where Vic was scheduled to open for Wilco.  It was right after Wilco’s Summer Teeth  album.  The show sold out, but then Wilco cancelled.  I was meeting my friend Sam, and we had already driven to L.A. when the news broke.  As a concession, the House of Blues allowed Vic to stay on the bill for a free show.   That second announcement, or clarification, came late, and unfortunately less than thirty people attended the free show.  It might have been twenty.  Sam and I grabbed barstools and put them on the wood floor in front of the stage.  Victoria Williams was in the crowd (she was also the subject of a Sweet Relief tribute), and she joined Vic for a song.  However, most of the set was uninspired.  The sparse crowd must have disappointed Vic.    He rambled through a few songs, missing notes and lyrics.  The short show’s only highlight was when he played a convincing version of  “Parade.”  The rambling dirge is about missed connections and misdirected relationships; it seemed perfect for the night.  Here are the first two verses:

 Where did you go after the parade
 I wandered, searching for about an hour
 then I parked it on a bench
 shifting and sulking
 those pesky little mosquitoes
 they nearly, nearly, nearly, nearly drained me

 Then a man dripping with vitalis
 said I looked like Joe Namath
 he asked me did I used to be famous
 and I said "neighbor, I'm famously late"
 and I said "neighbor, I'm famously late"

The second time I saw Vic was at The Mint, a small club/bar in Hollywood.  The audience was an odd mixture of hard-core fans, loud-mouthed drunks and starched-shirt record company executives.  Vic was at his most cantankerous; the drunks annoyed him, but it seemed like it was the record execs that really got his gall.  After a verbal exchange with an exuberant drunkard, he made a slight crack about “the suits.”  I’m sure he had an impulse to tell the execs to leave, to hand their comp tickets over to someone who actually wanted to hear his songs.  He didn’t though.  Vic was self-destructive, but he wasn’t stupid.

The first time I saw Vic in concert was the most memorable.  The show was at The Troubadour.  I didn’t know his music at the time, but I took Sam’s advice and bought tickets for Haley and me.   Haley was a new acquaintance, who was driving up from San Diego to stay with me.  I had met her a few months earlier while working on a film.  She seemed nice, kind of hip and fun, and I was happy to be seeing her again.

When Haley arrived at my house, she told me she’d been bitten by a spider and was taking Vicoden for the pain.  She seemed a bit phlegmatic, but fine.   We met Sam and some other friends in LA, had a few pre-show drinks and went to the Troubadour.  By the beginning of the show, Haley was spiraling downward.  The alcohol had synergized with the Vicoden and turned her into a mess of slurred speech and heavy eyelids.  She had the kind of buzz that Vic Chesnutt would have appreciated.

I was worried about my new acquaintance; not about her health, she was dosed up and, seemingly, in control.  It wasn’t her first time.  I was more concerned that I had lost a chance to connect with someone I wanted to like.   We had met on a film set, hit it off well, and had spent several hours in easy conversations.  No we seemed to be reeling toward a missed connection.  She was sedated, and I was “famously late.” 

Haley slept through the second half of the show.  Eventually, I didn’t care though.  As the set progressed, I realized I had made a new friend in Vic Chesnutt.   Vic sat alone on the stage, banging out simple chords on a guitar and keyboard.  His disability limited his playing to the simplest of structures, and his voice was thin and strained, but his message was brilliant, heartfelt, endearing.

Vic sparred with the crowd between songs, spurring constant shouts for song requests.   This is not an uncommon phenomenon at rock shows, but at Vic’s show the requests were varied – he had a huge body of work – and nearly constant.   Nearly every audience member, apparently, had his or her own particular favorite Vic Chesnutt song and, for the most part, Vic wasn’t going to play it.  He was rightly interested in supporting his new album The Salesman and Bernadette.  However, Vic suggested that if someone gave him a joint, or maybe a few joints, then he might play a request. No one complied, so the sparring continued.

As the set wore on, Vic delved into some of his older material including the song, “Onion Soup.”  The remorseful ballad details a lost chain of communication between old acquaintances.  Vic lost his way in the song and then stopped playing.  Frustrated, he admitted that he couldn’t remember the next verse.  There was a slight murmur in the crowd, for the first time there weren’t any shouts of song requests.   Then man stood up and shouted, “Mississippi is a mess sometimes.”   Vic nodded as if to say “Aha,” then responded, finishing the line, “…and not only when it rains.”  Then he continued singing, and maybe half the audience joined him for rest of the verse:  “How can you go back to that malarial island, cause our friendship is strained.”

To the reader this moment may sound contrived or embellished, but I was there, with friends, on a failed date with a nearly comatose woman, and the moment seemed genuine and moving.  Vic continued his set without further strain.  He even gave into the fans and played a couple requests.  I remember “Florida” was one of the requests.  I didn’t know the song then (I was a brand new fan, remember) but he had me from the first line:  “Florida, Florida, the redneck Riviera.”

As the set moved toward the end, I wondered what Vic would do about an encore.  The Troubadour stage was without a wheelchair ramp and there was no curtain to hide behind.  I thought someone would have to help Vic off the stage and then carry him back on the stage for the encore.  It seemed like it would be odd and awkward and difficult.

When Vic played his final song he thanked the crowd and wheeled away from the mic.  We all waited for someone to come to the stage, but no one did.  Vic just wheeled to the rear of the stage and stared back at us.   There was no pretense like “I’m not here.”  He was definitely there, staring at the crowd and waiting for the appropriate level of applause.  As the crowd caught on, he started to grin.  Encores are essentially a little game, and he was turning the game on its head.  He waited longer at the back of the stage.  When he felt the applause was sufficient, he wheeled back to the mic and finished the show.  It was an odd sequence of events, but as I would learn later, completely what one should expect from Vic Chesnutt.

When I heard that Vic had killed himself, I thought about the moment when he sat at the rear of the stage and stared up at the audience, cracking his mischievous smile, waiting to play yet another encore.  I wish he could have stayed in that moment – a moment without the demons of depression, a moment of pure adoration.  I think he deserved it.  I miss that smile.