Wednesday, December 30, 2015

TERMINAL FIVE








blending intellect with good old
hard rock,
projecting lyrics on a magic carpet 
ride of a NEIL OF STEEL heard voice~
An outstanding spokesmen,
exposing the "men behind the curtain":
Fallon's TRUTH ~ a sort of alchemic
wizardry hardly whispered &
Never muffled
you hear & feel  all CLUTCHES LYRICS...

As the band stands firm in their Grass Roots
anti establishment,
the golden age of ROCK~
rims the hard core/ rock an roll,
the tailored fit of fresh riffs~
that will never be old.
Their individual talents elevate
the performance;
no need for pompous mellowdramatic
body gestures,,,,,
bringing in the good ol' cow bell
Fallons preacher like stances
are enough to ignite you live.
On Fire the eye contact
contracted desire.
I must Admit I;m a sucker for the Witch.
I might deny her but my heart will never resist.




The mix was heavy, lastnight.
My soul was cuddled in the depths
of bass lines , deeply needed healing.
Squashed out sadness within the tight moshpit.

Thank you to my darling friend Kat.
She got me out from under the mourning of my dad.
 Unclutch the Clutch
and be clutched
in 



Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Lemmy Raise Hell !

I'll never forget the Night I got to see these guys. My boyfriend was schooling me at the time
in Bands like The Damned, Black Sabbath~ MØtorhead.....
 Cromags, Old school Metallica, BadBrains, SAMHAIN, The icemen and of course the hardcore sounds of
BACH~ Toccata & Fugue in D minor.
Most of the time I was half baked, nothing interested me more, at the time ,t hen a fat doob ! SO,
~ climbing into the back of John Gambles Huge boxy car,
I Can;t; remember wether it was like some old Plymouth or Cadillac ...
but the back seat
swallowed Me and Marco up.
There was no air between us.
The front seat was a couch ,Gamble's girl slid all the way over right by his side too.
We were on an adventure. I felt like I was in a dream.
I was floating.

I do believe the venue was in Queens somewhere~in 86' or 1987...?
perhaps the spring? L'amour East in Elmhurst...could that have been the Venue?!!
or was it the one in Brooklyn?
We walked in and the crowd was wild for these guys. I think I was just so new to their
sound~ I hadn;t "grown up" yet to the hard rock sounds of their particular graces.
Marco had sown the seed, it was just
in'it's infancy stages. It was my first hardcore moshpit sort of show....
scared little wannabe witch girl
I was.
I felt a tad like a foreigner...
Marco held me close ~ protected from Moshpit dangers. And When I say LOUD>
MØTORHEAD PLAYED LOUD.
I would go to CBGB"S all the time, I just had this sincere fear
for authority
 and never messed in the game of fake ID cards , like all my other friends,
so I would always just stand outside..... little did I know all I was missing.
Sometimes it takes alittle while before the magic takes root, that;s all.
All good things in All good time.
Nice to Know Lemmy went out inside his own home.





Wednesday, December 23, 2015



                                          

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Saturday, December 19, 2015

The Summer of The Shrew........



The summer of ......ahhhhh
Huh?
Yeh that summer?!
Oh Look the poster says 78' ~
 for some reason
I thought it was the early 80's but 
my memory has it~
I was still going to PS41 ~ 
so yeah 78'!

In 1979, I saw my first CONCERT at
Madison Square Garden
 KISS
And that was with my step dad Larry.
We walked all the way back down to 
WestBeth~ ears ringing.
The Best of both worlds.

In 1978,
The summer in the Park.
We would come early , as usual,
Dad rolled super early ALLL the TIME>
We would get a little snack pack from the vendor out front.
Cheddar or sometimes Brie, an Apple, Baguette, some grapes ,
nuts & a cookie ~and Whatever Drink we decided~NO SODA.
Dad would make sure we got into our comped seats and get us
settled.
"Sit tight" ! We did. My brother and I were well behaved.
Shakespeare in the park & a snack pack~
the sweet summertime air and Raoul Julia.
The heat would die down with the shadows of the on coming evening,
which came late. It never seemed too buggy or perhaps they were just attracted 
to the theatre lights.
The heat of the concrete jungle was absent from
this small patch of forest in the middle of
manhattan.
The soul of the city is lush, green and
hey looky there creative too~
Shakespeare in the Park
under the stars....
Outdoor theatre how fascinating.
AHHHHHH   Raoul ~ 
I had been crushin' on him 
since Two Gentlemen Of Verona.
So what I was like barely four,
wow I am weird.
This particular summer show was an easy one to "follow"
being raised in all sorts & types of plays.
AND SHAkespeare huh,,,questionable
No wait,, this one was a good one.
I could understand this one.
It was a little bit like the soap opera
my grandma Rich watched on Tv.

The passion, the lust that was not returned.
The word Woo was used alot .
Tensions, hatred turned into submissive love.
Now there;s something to chew on as a 10 year old.
Not to mention the looks of Meryl with her pushed up renaissance
bussom ~ the powdered cleavage .
The power of Raoul as Petrucio,
meets his match in Kate.
They break eachother.
Meryl Streep was just starting to make some waves in the arena of 
actors, and apparently,
she was very close with my Dad;s girlfriend `seemingly still is.
All I know is when we went back stage after the performances , Dad pulled us in~
And there was Raoul, he admired my "all grown Uppedness" ~melted I was indeed.
I do recall meeting Meryl Streep..and her beauty was striking.
Her delicately pronounced nose and the color of her eyes didn;t catch up
until you were right in front of her.
Gentle and sincere, my dad did not like her. He had such a funny and particular hate for certain
fellow actors...and it always  made me wonder if, perhaps, he was
threatened by their talents . Or  was it that , his ego was not receiving much praise as perhaps
those he hated were as narcissistic as he was.....thus so absorbed with self~ they forgot
to blow some praising smoke up the Bottoms Ass ~thus the hillbilly hate would take root
in him??!!
 ANd please NOTE
I speak this of my father with the utmost love in my heart. It;s merely
an opinion . An inner observation.
It;s ego mania.... and
we suffer from a longline of it.

I look in the "mirror", I see all these marvelous traits I seemingly inherited .
 Perhaps watching my father, acknowledging how he treated
people ~both good & On'ry'~silent or opinionated;overly sincere
or beyond detached :
made me think how that plays a role in the success of an actor.
A parent, a teacher , a librarian , a student ,  
a general human being.
Really?!!! REALLY ...
am I going on here~ into another
generalization of blah blah blAh land,,,,
Bottom line , at this point'
MY DAD WOULD ALWAYS SAY
"FUCK "EM"!

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

John Bottoms

I look at my Dad in these Pictures.
I knew my Dad, I mean yeh! he was my Dad.
Of course I knew him. As a child , I knew him.
Perhaps I have always looked at my Dad thru my
child'e eye?!
He was the one that came home late that night,
when I cut my nose wide open.
Mom was drawing a bath for me and my brother and the lofts
were being built in our new Westbeth Apartment.D802.
Ellen Stewart from La MaMa hooked Dad up with.
You had to be an artist in order to get in there.
I had taken a nice block of wood , wanted to float it in the
bath, It was going to make the perfect boat!
I was testing it out in the sink as the bath water was collecting,
I went to rest my elbow on the side of the sink
and as I slipped , I must have sliced the part of my nose
where the upper lip and nostril meet.
Blood everywhere. Mom placed me over the toilet,
as I watched the beautiful droplets of blood hit the water and explode
into a collage of an expanding cloud, my mom rushed my brother to the neighbors.

Grabbed me up, and ran me all the way to Saint Vincent;s Hospital.
I remember her waiting for the light to turn at Seventh Avenue.
And she was telling me to stay calm.
They tied me down an placed a sheet with one small circle for my eye and
one circle for my nose, As I could see this enormous needle come at my face.
I freaked out.
It was horrible.
I got stitches.
The best part of that night was when my Dad came home and
just sat with me in his lap, quietly, in the shadows from the lights that illuminated the hallways
across the way into our apartment.
Quietly sitting there in his arms, I felt safe.
I wondered about the suite & tie
 and the briefcase ~ Must have been important where he was this night.
Because he NEVER wore a suit let alone carried a briefcase.
He asked me all about what had happened. He listened too,
he listened.

These early memories of my Father being around, are bittersweet~
shortly thereafter he packed his bags and left us.
But see he didn't "leave" us..... he left our apartment
but he was ever so present.

Today , I do the math. I figured , every other weekend from friday to sunday
with acouple extra days for christmas plus the months of August.

So 12 months in a year.
Four weekends in a month..... four days to visit in each month
4x12=48days plus acouple xtra days for xmas is like 50 days
plus the thirty days
so that makes like 80 days.... out of 365 days..... huh.

DID I KNOW MY DAD?

Funny how doubt can play a Lead roll in a child that felt abandonment.
I KNEW MY DAD>!

My brother and I had his attention in a sacred way.
He was our father, one whom bathed himself in us.
Perhaps the "limited" visitation
gave him reverence for us in a way
a stay at home father might take "TIME" for granted.!?

It wasn;t an over absorbed : helicopter type of situation
either. We got on his nerves something fierce.
His quiet reading~ ACtoR ways were boring to two
vivacious village kids. The black and white TV
only got channels 5,11 and 13.
Which meant Baseball or Animals, Muppets & Sesame Street.
The time we threw pebbles from the roof of dads loft
down at the dudes working, parking cars ....
AH hello.... a Parking Lot and flying pebbles ~
$500.00 later it never occurred to us we might break a window?!!! REALLY.
But for Dad , forgiveness came quick. There was no time to waste.
Our time was quality time.

Battery Park City became our living room in the summertime. Dad could
find peace in his readings. As Chris an I learned how to climb the tiny
cherry Trees or play Hide & Seek Tag around the fort there.
Then there was Village Skate or Waverly Skate....
Dad would just chill ALL daY long while me an chris would
skate our little hearts out.
That put us into super chill mode, Dad was smart.
He would feed our soul with things to do and then take us
to delicious places to eat , like the Thai joint on Bayard st.
Cheap and delicious. He would always order the Full fish,
head an all.
We would settle in to watch Hitchcock or National Geo.
He would have us learning Chess or
School us on all the pressure points in our feet....
and then the next day ~ it was our turn to show him where
they were. He had the most beautiful toes an feet.

I virtually learned the neighborhood because we would walk
everywhere.
It was rough keeping up with those those super longlegs of his.
My friends would always say my Dad was the tallest Dad they
ever saw.
Six foot 3". That;s right and super Skinny.

Dad was working at the Public Theatre. Those enormous Banners flowing
in the air as we would approach the side entrance in.  The Landmark for me
was that crazy Super giant Black cube that resided in the
middle of the road.....

Or the orange red brick of the 49thStreet Train Station ..where we would always hit
the Howard Johnson's prior to a performance or after a rehearsal.
Chris and I would hang out in the tiny little box seats off to the side
of the stage. He with his MatchBox Cars and Me with my Barbies.
The box seats with red velvet curtains was our little playpen.
I wonder sometimes how Dad got away with bringing us with him to
 his broadway rehearsals. I think it was Joel Zwick that came back there once
and told us to keep it down. I was mortified. It;s a way to learn how to be mindful.
This I learned well growing up around the theatre. I respect all the ups and downs
that my father;s journey brought to my journey.

We were trusted to sit tight, in the audience,
so young.... awaiting the dimming of the lights. It took everything in me not to
tell everyone seated around me ~ how mY DAD WAS PERFORMING>
I knew every song, every line....
I spent my life....well........  eighty some odd days of it A year~
observing, listening, and learning how my father morphed into a new
person for each and every play he ever did before he moved to Minneapolis.
And at that point I was older and following my own path ~ as most college students
do.


Dad ,just living his life, was a pure installation.








Monday, December 14, 2015

Friday, December 4, 2015