The Cool School
Page 48
cages of their own making
Some say he belongs in prison,
him and his mob connections
You know what they say,
but nothing was proven.
In the 50s, his cloven hooves
In the 50s, his cloven hooves
marked up many a bandstand—Critics said
marked up many a bandstand
QUIT—
QUIT
Hit it!
Who does he think he is?
Sicilian
Overly sensitive
Sicilian
Split personality
Sicilian
Schizy,
Sicilian
scary,
Jilly Rizzo
Jilly Rizzo
alcohol/alcohol
blood/blood alcohol content
alcohol content/alcohol content
blood brotherhood
rat pack
WNEW AM 11-3-0
Radio City Music Hall
Nelson Riddle
Jimmy Van Heusen
Axel Stordahl
Johnny Mercer
Earl Wilson
Harold Arlen
Jule Styne
William B. Williams
Sammy Cahn
Sam Giancana
Sammy Davis Jr.
Cole Porter
Toots Shor—
Toots Shor—
He likes it when people call him a
class act
class act
it confirms his own opinion,
If he is misunderstood,
If he is misunderstood,
it is because he is confusing
it is because he is an asshole
This fabulous gift
Your fabulous face always
stored in the case of such a
grimacing at reporters—
troubled man—Sad.
Don’t make me laugh!
Got a telegram from Sinatra/Here’s what it says:
Your information stinks lady
don’t talk to me baby you’re
broads always think they know best
not in my league, not in my league
don’t they don’t talk to me baby
where you where you wear you wear you wear
you’re not in my league,
not in my league
The way you wear your hat/The way you sip your tea
where’d you get that information you’re
The memory of all that, oh no they can’t
a leech, man you’re a parasite just like the
take that away from me, the way your smile
rest of them get it, cunt C-U-N-T you know
just beams/The way you sing off key
what that who what that is don’t you been
The way you haunt my dreams
laying down for that two dol lars all your
Oh no they can’t take that away from me
life that stench you that stench you smell is
We may never never meet again on that
coming from her! I don’t want to talk to
bumpy road to love/Still I’ll always keep
you go home you go home and take a bath
the memory of—
let’s get the hell outta here baby you’re
TRAMP
nothin but a TRAMP.
In a dream, Sinatra is awakened
by 20-year-old Mia Farrow
as the ghost of his own past.
(SING:)
Strangers in the night/exchanging glances wondering in the night what were the chances
She comes in the night praises his phrasing His voice clear of vibrato
we’d be sharing love before the night was through
natural as conversation melodious and cool is restored. She shows him Pearl Jam She shows him Nirvana and he slams them and when he slams them, everybody says
WELL, FRANK’S RIGHT! ROCK N ROLL DOES SUCK
WELL, FRANK’S RIGHT! ROCK N ROLL DOES SUCK
Somehow the past feels like
a better place/A place where Ava Gardner
a better place/A place where Ava Gardner
bakes coconut cakes
bakes coconut cakes
a place without an Elvis
a place without an Elvis
a world of his own
a world of his own
where all men are equal brutal
where he is the leader
insufferable laughable
postwar Las Vegas mafia royalty
childish homophobe RICH
Hollywood underworld RICH
The 60s that the rest of us
remember
are as a little museum to
Frank Sinatra
a small curious place
a small curious place
where Viet Nam and Watts
where Viet Nam and Watts
play constantly in a silent
loop on the video monitor
and there’s a box
and there’s a box
containing Pink Floyd Eldridge Cleaver Bernadette Devlin
containing the Stones, Hendrix Dennis Hopper Malcolm McDowell
everything Mark Rudd ever said
and the whole Stax Volt catalog,
all incomprehensible to Frank.
Only thing in the whole
decade makes any sense to
him is Mrs. Robinson’s
stockinged legs—
those he understands.
those he understands.
Back from engagements beyond the grave,
old friends visit Sinatra backstage
Sammy Davis Jr. falls on him weeping/Tells him
Baby you’re the Chairman of the Board
Baby you’re the Chairman of the Board
Joe E. Lewis is glad to be back
He says Vegas is better than heaven
He says Vegas is better than heaven
Deeper cleavage and lots more booze
Opens a bottle/here’s to the boys
They don’t notice/the club is closing
They don’t notice/the passing of time
because they’re drunk
because their wives
because they’re has-beens
because their hormones
because they’re famous
because their fans
because they’re boys
because they’re drunk
but you know somthin
way I see it
The real problem is mortality
The real problem is mortality
The real problem is nothing lasts
The real problem is you get old and die
Gotta grow up sometime/Life is short
Gotta go sometime/Time is short
songs finish
beauty vanishes
God plays dice in this casino right here
God knows why this world’s the way it is
The real problem is body and soul don’t mix
The real problem is life doesn’t make sense
WHY DON’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND SING
The boundaries of good taste and human
decency having been crossed and crossed out
again and again by the bourbon in his
glass,
bloodstream
Frank Sinatra stands and offers a toast:
To the human race
To the human race
To hell with the human race!
To hell with the human race!
Nancy with the laughing face
Bunch of buck and a half hookers,
what has she ever done for me!
what have they ever done for me!
All you mothers are worthless—
All you mothers are worthless—
There’s nobody in my league!
There’s nobody in my league!
Placing myself on his go
od side I
raise my hand to ask a question:
Mr. Sinatra,
Mr. Sinatra,
how can anyone so wretched sing so well?
how can anyone so wretched sing so well?
Well he says
I’m not the first
and I won’t be the last
one born
a walking contradiction,
dead on from the heart
the rest all thrown together,
hitting the same walls
over and over and over—
A person is only a case
A holder for all manner of things
A random arrangement of idiocy and glory
Sometimes a barrage of artistic light
Sometimes an embarrassment,
a dismaying puddle of slush
Sometimes a nobody,
fading into the crowd or the distance
the welfare office
the supermarket
the laundromat, the library
and sometimes
marvelous as a god,
all in one
all in one lifetime
all in one life.
Doo be doo be doo . . .
For Virgil Moorefield
Verbal Abuse, Summer 1993
Eric Bogosian
(b. 1953)
In the nineties we found ourselves in a weird place, with poetry as we had known it dissolving before our very ears, morphing into stand-up comedy, often of a faux self-deprecating confessional variety. Quite unhip. We were rescued, however, by of all things performance art and such solo performers as Ann Magnuson, Spalding Gray, Karen Finley, and Eric Bogosian. Mr. Bogosian is also a playwright. His Talk Radio was made into a movie directed by Oliver Stone and starring the author. He has acted in many films and played one of televisions most beloved cops on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
America
A silhouette against the back wall of the theater reveals a man speaking into a microphone. We hear a basso profundo radio voice à la Rush Limbaugh.
I WAS SHAVING this morning. Shaving with a disposable razor and suddenly I thought of my Dad. I wondered, “What would I be doing right now, if it were forty years ago? If it wasn’t 1994, but 1954 and I’m my own Dad?” And I imagined myself going downstairs, and there’s my wife and she’s not racing to meet the car pool, no, she’s making me breakfast. She’s got a gingham apron on, she’s making me bacon and eggs . . . which I eat with tremendous pleasure because I’ve never even heard of cholesterol before.
And here are my children sitting at my 1954 breakfast table and they’re well-behaved and well-dressed. In fact, my son is wearing a necktie. I’m wearing a necktie. I pick up the morning newspaper—all the news is good: we’ve won the war in Korea, they’ve found a cure for polio, employment’s up, housing’s up, everybody’s happy.
I own my own home, I own my own car (which I wash every single Saturday), I love my wife, I like baseball, I believe in the President, and I pray to God in a place called church. No drugs. No drugs anywhere. Only people doing drugs in 1954 are William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg!
No one’s complaining. We’re not hearing about women’s rights and homosexual rights and minorities’ rights and immigrants’ rights. No victims. No sexual harassment. No worries about the environment. The environment is just fine, thank you.
No therapists. No twelve-step groups. No marches on Washington. No homeless people. No AIDS. Just good old-fashioned values like honesty and hard work and bravery and fidelity. And that’s it. It’s America forty years ago. Everybody’s working. Everybody’s straight. Everybody’s happy.
And I thought to myself, what a wonderful world that must have been, a world without problems. I would love to be there right now. And then I remembered a terrible nightmare I’d had last night.
Now lemme tell you about this nightmare: It’s the middle of the night, I’m in bed, of course, who shows up in my bedroom but Bill Clinton. As I said, it’s a nightmare. He takes my hand and he says, “Come with me.” And we float out the window and into the night air, and down to the street and we drop into this open manhole.
And we’re walking around in the sewers, Bill and I. I’m thinking, I never trusted this guy, where’s he taking me?
We walk and we walk and we come to this big cave and in this cave there are all these people lying around on mattresses, smoking things: pot, crack, hashish, opium. Whatever these people smoke.
And through the haze, I see all these familiar faces! Oh, there’s Whoopi Goldberg reading the Communist Manifesto. And there’s Ralph Nader bitching about something. And Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins leading a peace rally. And Roseanne Arnold having sex with Madonna. And Ice T and Ice Cube and Vanilla Ice and all the other pieces of ice and all the other troublemakers and commies and lefties and people with green hair and tattoos and goatees and rings through their noses and rings through their nipples and rings through their penises.
And some of them are marching around protesting something . . . there’s another bunch of them counting their food stamps and welfare checks. Right in front of me a bunch of idiots are watching Beavis and Butt-head on MTV.
And I’m horrified. And I turned to Bill and I said, “Bill, where are we? I’m frightened.” And he said, “Don’t you know?” And I said, “No. Hell?” And he laughed and he said, “No, of course not! This isn’t Hell. Look around you. Don’t you recognize the place? This is America, 1994! Better get used to it.”
Let’s go to a commercial.
Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead, 1994
George Carlin
(1937–2008)
It seems appropriate to end with a comedian. Comedy has always represented the front lines. It doesn’t just sit there in its comfy coffee shop, it gets up in front of louts, drunks, and hecklers and challenges them to a mental fight. Well, great comedy like that of Lord Buckley, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl did. It picked up where the poets left off, with the facts. In 1966 Lenny Bruce was arrested for using nine specific words. Seven of them appear in George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” routine, which wound up figuring prominently in a test case before the Supreme Court. As a result of that decision you will hear “motherfucker” on the radio only between 10 P.M. and 6 A.M., unless it’s a hip-hop station that the FCC can’t understand.
A Modern Man
I’m a modern man,
digital and smoke-free;
a man for the millennium.
A diversified, multi-cultural,
post-modern deconstructionist;
politically, anatomically and ecologically incorrect.
I’ve been uplinked and downloaded,
I’ve been inputted and outsourced.
I know the upside of downsizing,
I know the downside of upgrading.
I’m a high-tech low-life.
A cutting-edge, state-of-the-art,
bi-coastal multi-tasker,
and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond.
I’m new-wave, but I’m old-school;
and my inner child is outward-bound.
I’m a hot-wired, heat-seeking,
warm-hearted cool customer;
voice-activated and bio-degradable.
I interface with my database;
my database is in cyberspace;
so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive,
and from time to time I’m radioactive.
Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve,
ridin’ the wave, dodgin’ the bullet,
pushin’ the envelope.
I’m on point, on task, on message,
and off drugs.
I’ve got no need for coke and speed;