Max "Bunny" Sparber

DOWNLOAD "THIS IS SAILOR MARTIN"! (64.9MB ZIP FILE! 15 MP3S AND A PRINTABLE COVER)

LAUNCHING laugh-laden rockets filled with laughing gas, Sailor Martin presents his first complete album of original songs! 15 melodies to delight the ear and shock the squares, comprising 30 minutes of mirthful melodies -- all for free download here!

"These short and simple tunes sound like the fetal alcohol syndrome love-child of Daniel Johnston and Tom Waits." -- Switchblade Comb

"The album is a 15 track reason to listen to your parents, go to college and get a real job, yet there’s something to be said for tales of wicked debauchery and its ensuing wisdom only a drunken sailor could share. And for a puppet, Martin is quite a good ukulele player." -- Perfect Porridge

"This is your new 3:00 AM sitting alone in a corner drunk album." -- Aaron's Hotlinks

"Get ready to laugh your ass off." -- letoile magazine blog

This Is Sailor Martin includes:

1. The Power of Alcohol
2. I Married Her For Her Money (She Married Me For My Lies)
3. I'm Hard On Her But She's Down On Me
4. I'm Not As Drunk As You Am I Think
5. It's Hard For Me To Enjoy It When You Sit On It
6. If This Bed Could Talk
7. Horrible Things What Live in the Sea
8. Why Are Women So Afraid of Seamen?
9. If You Don't Want a Razor Fight
10. You're So Boring Here
11. One Million Frogtown Whores
12. The Twitch
13. You Homo-Loving Commie Sons of Guns
14. Cell Block Number Four
15. Pour Me Another Box of Wine

(Click on individual tracks to find out more or to listen or download separately.)

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SAILOR MARTIN SINGS about what he knows. Ukulele, toy accordion, tambourine, wooden fish that makes "clopping" noises, and, at one point, a duet between a tin whistle and a plastic ocarina.

"THE POWER OF ALCOHOL" LYRICS:

Do as I ask
Or don't do nothing at all
I'm drunk with power
The power of alcohol
If I could stand
I'd be standing tall
I'm drunk with power
The power of alcohol

Maybe I'm a bully
But come whenever I call
I'm drunk with power
The power of alcohol
Stand behind me
To catch me when I fall
I'm drunk with power
The power of alcohol

If I fall down
Prop me against the wall
I'm drunk with power
The Power of alcohol
I'll give my orders
Collapsed in the privy stall
I'm drunk with power
The power of alcohol

LISTEN TO "THE POWER OF ALCOHOL":



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SAILOR MARTIN FINDS TRUE ROMANCE. A song featuring ukulele, harmonica, wooden sand-filled egg, tambourine, and a duet between Sailor Martin and himself.

"CELL BLOCK NUMBER FOUR" LYRICS:

I love the orange jumpsuit
That my baby wore
She gave me her number
Cell block number four

She whispers promises
Through the jail cell door
She gave me her number
Cell block number four

I will be hers
She will be mine
We'll be together
When she'd done doing time

She's paid her debt
She won't come back no more
She's did her time
In cell block number four

LISTEN TO "CELL BLOCK NUMBER FOUR":



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WEIGHT THIS MORNING: 182.5, a loss of a pound and a half since last week. I am inching down toward 179, which is the moment my BMI reaches "normal," and I have lost 21.5 pounds total. I have started to integrate meal replacement bars, specifically those from Special K, into my diet. Since the start of this, at about 4pm, I would get hungry and often get myself a cheese sandwich from a nearby shop. Not only was this unnecessarily expensive, but there was no way for me to really know how many calories I was eating. Based on how hungry I have been now that I have switched to the meal replacement bars, I would wager a guess that I was underestimating how many calories I was taking in by a very substantial margin.

Not a big deal, really. Obviously, whatever rough calculations I have been making, and however wrong they may have been, I have nonetheless been eating little enough that I lose weight, at a rate of one and a half or two pounds per week. It will be interesting to see if this speeds up over the next few weeks, as I continue to integrate meal replacement bars and shakes into my diet, and therefore have a more exact sense of how many calories I take in. I suspect I will start to lose weight faster, which would be nice. I knew this was going to be a pretty long-term project, and I am fine with that, but it's a lot more encouraging to lose five pounds in a week that one pound, even if it only happens every so often.

A TROPICAL SHANTY featuring ukulele, some horrible whistling, a cheese grater, and a glass struck by a spoon.

"WHY ARE WOMEN SO AFRAID OF SEAMEN" LYRICS:

Why are women so afraid of seamen
So we're wet and we're salty, but so let it be then
You know we can't resist the touch of your hand
It just sends us flying and we don't care just where we land

Why are women so afraid of seamen
They close their eyes and scowl when we just want to see them
It excites us mightily to be with ladies fair
But we will try mightily to not get into your hair

Why are women so afraid of seamen?
We beg and we beseech and drop down on our knees then
What we have to offer must come down from above
If you give us half a chance we will shower you with love

LISTEN TO "WHY ARE WOMEN SO AFRAID OF SEAMEN?":



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A DANCE SONG from Sailor Martin, or, rather, a song about uncontrollable movement. Ukulele, harmonica, finger snaps, and a kazoo pushed through some sort of crazy filter.

"THE TWITCH" LYRICS:

First you roll your eyes in your head
Then your left foot starts to itch
And then you fall down on the ground
And then you're doing it
You're doing the twitch

You froth a little around the mouth
And up and down begins to switch
And then you shake and shake and shake
And then you're doing it
You're doing the twitch

Tug your pants and tug your shirt now
Soon you've stripped off every stitch
Don't you let them medicate you
Because you're doing it
You're doing the twitch

LISTEN TO "THE TWITCH":



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INSPIRED BY THE words of actor Sean Penn, Sailor Martin sings a very short song of social change, accompanied by ukulele, harmonica, jews harp, and tambourine.

"YOU HOMO-LOVING COMMIE SONS OF GUNS" LYRICS

You homo loving commie songs of guns
Don't you know what you have done
Soon we'll have dogs married to cats
And I for one just can't wait for that
Because my dog's been making out with me for years

You homo loving commie songs of guns
You don't have no idea what you've begun
We're all Marxists now in the USA
And I for one couldn't wait for the day
Because I've been drinking vodka now for years

You homo loving commie sons of guns
Did you think this was all for fun
What am I gonna do with a communist wife
When I'm ready to lead a homosexual life
Did you think of all the contradictions this would cause

LISTEN TO "YOU HOMO-LOVING COMMIE SONS OF GUNS":



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A SAILOR MARTIN SONG about discovering your lover is not who you expect her to be. Tambourine and ukulele.

"YOU'RE SO BORING HERE" LYRICS:

When I see you on the screen
It's hard to believe you're just eighteen
And the men throw themselves at you at the premiere
I'm the man with whose bed you share
And how can you be so exciting there
When you're so boring here

When I see you on the screen
You are positively obscene
But you know things ain't always just what they seem
The things you do with other men
I can't get you to do them again
And you're so boring here

I shoulda known
That when I got you alone
Things they wouldn't be the same

When I see you on the screen
I can't believe the things I seen
The biting and the pulling of the hair
For someone so experienced pornographically
You ain't done none of that with me
Oh you're so boring here

LISTEN TO "YOU'RE SO BORING HERE":



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THE FELLOW walked around Royal Street serenading young women. I don't know how much money street performers made, but, based on the way the ladies reacted to this guitarist, I would say he had a pretty good racket anyway.

A RAUCOUS GARAGE-BAND BLUES NUMBER, featuring ukulele, tambourine, and harmonica. A song about a mean woman.

"I'M HARD ON HER BUT SHE'S DOWN ON ME" LYRICS:

She's got a vicious tongue
She comes from Tennessee
She carries an acid vial
She has a bloodied knee
I am hard on her
But she's down on me

She can drink as much
As any sailor at sea
For any shot you drink
My baby drinks three
I am hard on her
But she's down on me

She got every fact wrong
But don't you dare disagree
She's got a sting as sharp
As a killer bee
I am hard on her
But she's down on me

LISTEN TO "I'M HARD ON HER BUT SHE'S DOWN ON ME":



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A DRINKING SONG in the tradition of the British Islands. Ukulele, wooden egg with sand in it, handclaps and tin whistle.

"I'M NOT AS DRUNK AS YOU AM I THINK" LYRICS:

Pour me a whiskey then pour me a beer and then pour me a whiskey to chase it
The sun's just come up and it's already morning and I need a drink to face it
Where I am? I'm not upright and there are shoes and spittoons around
Well, just pour the mug down my throat; I can drink just as well on the ground
Red breast or black bush or Tullamore Dew
Fill up my shot glass and then fill it up anew
Pour me another cup, old mate, let's have another drink
And I may be be drunk but I'm not as drunk as you am drunk I think

Pour me a whiskey then pour me a beer and then pour me a whiskey once more
I can't walk too well and I need a shot to get me through the door
Where am I now? I fell down the stairs? Am I in the saloon wine cellar?
And if I'm not down here to drink some port well then tell me what the hell for
Dow port or Graham port or something Vordelho
Don't stop till I've drunk enough have I drunk enough well hell no
Pour me another cup, old mate, let's have another drink
And I may be be drunk but I'm not as drunk as you am drunk I think

LISTEN TO "I'M NOT AS DRUNK AS YOU AM I THINK":



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I HAVE BEEN REMISS in not mentioning a student production of my play Minstrel Show at the Oklahoma City University's Black Box Theatre. It is a student production; I don't charge for students to do my plays, although I do ask that they keep me updated about their production, because I am always curious. The director of this show, Tinasha LaRaye' Williams, has been very kind about keeping me informed about the production, and she seems like an enthusiastic and very serious director. You can read an interview with her about the show in the Oklahoma City Gazette. Details about this production, which runs through this weekend, are available on Facebook.

More plays of Max Sparber.

BUNNY ZIPS PAST an advertising statue of a bald man holding a burger in Faribault, MN.

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AN INSTRUMENTAL by Sailor Martin: ukulele, jug, Jew's harp, spoons, egg, harmonica, and wordless drunken mumbling.

LISTEN TO "POUR ME ANOTHER BOX OF WINE":



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DAY 50 of the RocknRolla diet. This morning, I weighed 184 pounds, down 2 1/2 pounds from last week, for a total loss of 20 pounds. Five more pounds and I will officially exit the "overweight" category of my Body Mass Index and enter the "normal" category. At my current rate of weight loss, I reckon that should be in two or three weeks. And that's just fine. I have three weeks left of this particular diet, and if I can end it having lost 25 pounds, I'll be quite pleased. That will be a loss off about 12 percent of my total weight.

Of course, it won't be the end of my diet -- just the part I have loosely defined as The RocknRolla diet, which has consisted of little but a fast at the start and an attempt to a daily ration of about 950 calories. But, then, I think all diets are variations of this -- they all serve to regulate your caloric intake in one way or another.

The next iteration will be what I am going to call The Cookies and Shakes Diet, and I'll do that for the next two and a half months. This will be a pretty straightforward meal-substitution diet, replacing two meals a day with those various weight loss bars and shakes and whatnot that are on the market. There is an advantage to this approach over what I am doing now, in that I often feel that I am just guessing at the amount of calories that I consume. I'll have a cheese sandwich at a restaurant for lunch, as an example, and will guess that it's about 250 calories, but who knows? Depending on how they make it, it could be twice that. This hasn't really been a problem, because even if I go over 950 calories per day, I am still well below what I would need to consume to maintain my current weight (about 2048), but meal replacement plans make it much easier to get an exact calories count. Additionally, I have been wanting to curb my spending at restaurants, and this will be a good way to do so.

The start of this diet will also mark the start of a related project, called From the Top to the Bottom. I'm very interested in the fact that the difference between the top normal weight and the bottom normal weight is more than 40 pounds. As I plan to continue to lose weight until I reach the bottom, I have decided to take a photograph myself as I drop from about 180 to about 140. At the end of that time, I'll string all the photos together as a time-lapse movie, which I think should be pretty entertaining to watch.

More Rock Star Skinny.

A CLOSE HARMONY COUNTRY ROCK SONG about love and deception, featuring ukulele, harmonica, jews harp, and tambourine.

"I MARRIED HER FOR HER MONEY (SHE MARRIED ME FOR MY LIES)" LYRICS:

She had a diamond ring
And ivory colored thighs
I married her for her money
She married me for my lies
I had deceived her
But she had lied to me
She had no money she had no money
She had no money at all

She told me tales of bonds
She flashed a smile of gold
But on our wedding night
There wasn't a thing she could fold
I had said bad things
But she had told me worse
She had no money she had no money
She had no money at all

I had lied of great things
Wonderful places we would see
But how the hell could we travel
With her imaginary money
What's the point of divorce
When you don't get a thing
She had no money she had no money
She had no money at all

LISTEN TO "I MARRIED HER FOR HER MONEY (SHE MARRIED ME FOR MY LIES)":



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THIS FEELS like a sort of iconic New Orleans image: A man in a straw hat playing saxophone with the Mississippi running behind him. I think sometimes people imagine the soundtrack to New Orleans might be some sort of jazzy sax solo. They're not completely wrong -- you probably hear more brass music in New Orleans than anyone else. But it's rarely the sort of meandering saxophone that plays as atmosphere behind movies. Some of it is traditional jazz, and so you'll sometimes see a gang of a half-dozen brass instrumentalists set up near Jackson Square playing noisy dance music from the 1920s. A lot of is it rhythm and blues and New Orleans-style funk, which are about as close to an indigenous music of the city as you're likely to find. The languid solo saxophone is a pretty rare site in the town. You're far more likely to find an army of brass players marching through town, playing uptempo numbers by Fats Domino or Ernie K-Doe or the Funky Meters.

I OWN GUNS. This fact sometimes surprises people who think only squirrel eating rural bumpkins bear arms, especially since I am a rootless cosmopolitan and an urban intellectual. And it is a little odd, in that I don't own the guns for self-protection, but, instead, because I like to go to the range every now and then and shoot them. I have a levermatic 30-30 rifle and a 20-gauge shotgun, and I have had them for about nine months. I keep them near the bed, or, sometimes, just let them malinger around the apartment, which I am sure has been a little surprising for people to see. I tell them what I just told you: It's for target practice. Of course, the truth is that I just feel safer having them on hand, in case of zombie uprising, but people don't really seem to take the threat of the undead as seriously as they might, so I hesitate to bring it up.

But it's not a good idea to have an unsecured gun around the house. People who say they get guns for protection should check the statistics -- whatever gains you might enjoy by being able to brandish a boomstick at a burglar is more than offset by the increased likelihood of that gun being used for suicide or homicide, or injuring or killing someone accidentally. A gun is a terribly dangerous thing, and you'd be smart to lock it up.

So that's what I have done, in multiple ways. The guns themselves have locks on their triggers. The guns have cases, which are also locked. And the ammo is kept in a locked case. In the unlikely event that someone breaks into my apartment, it might take me a moment or two to get my shotgun out (don't underestimate how quickly I can do it, though), but at least nobody I care about is likely to be accidentally harmed because I happen to enjoy shooting holes in paper targets. Additionally, I figure if the zombies ever come, they're pretty slow-moving, so I should be able to have both guns at the ready for when I need them.

More 101 Things in 1001 Days.

BUNNY GETS HIS JET PACK up into the air to soar past the 55 1/2-foot fiberglass statue of the Jolly Green Giant that stands guard over Interstate 90.

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ONE OF THE THINGS I MISS MOST about the French Quarter is the fact that just taking a walk around town provided so many opportunities to be entertained. The Quarter has a long tradition of street performers, and several streets -- Bourbon and Royal in particular -- are often filled to overflowing with musicians, human statues, street magicians, and other performers. I always took my camera with me when I left the apartment, so I took quite a few photos of street performers, which I shall republish over the next week or so.

A LOVE SONG, of a sort, in the style of Andrew Bird. Ukulele and wooden egg filled with sand.

"IF THIS BED COULD TALK" LYRICS:

My last lover
And all the rest said
If this bed could talk
I'd be arrested
If this bed could talk
What would it say

The girls they scream
And get excited
If these walls could talk
I'd be indicted
If these walls could talk
I'd go away

I do mischief
And none's complained
But if this room could speak
I'd be restrained
If this room could speak
The secrets it could betray

LISTEN TO "IF THIS BED COULD TALK":



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BUNNY jetpacks at night in Mankato, MN, first past the gorgeous Roto-Sphere at Jerry Dutler's Bowl, and then past the last remaining Happy Chef statue.

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AN OUT-OF-TUNE CONCERTINA, a ukulele, a tambourine, and a sailor's fantasy.

"ONE MILLION FROGTOWN WHORES" LYRICS:

If I had
A million dollars
When I washed up on the shore
I'd go to Frogtown
And spend it all
On one million Frogtown whores
One million dollars
One million dollars
One million whore

If I owned a
Enormous kingdom
Larger than the Turks or the Moors
I'd go to Frogtown
To find my subjects
One million Frogtown whores
One million subjects
One million subjects
One million whores

If I was met a
Powerful genie
In a lamp like tales of yore
I would start wishing
One million wishes
For one million Frogtown whores
One million wishes
One million wishes
One million whores

LISTEN TO "ONE MILLION FROGTOWN WHORES":



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A ukulele, a harmonica, and a whole lot of inappropriate.

"HOW AM I GONNA ENJOY IT WHEN YOU JUST SIT ON IT" LYRICS:

How you gonna let me
Enjoy it
When you just
Sit on it
It don't do no good
Under there
Buried under dress and
Underwear

Baby I want to see it
Baby why don't you free it
Baby I beg you please
You can't keep it hidden
Between your pretty knees

LISTEN TO "HOW AM I GONNA ENJOY IT WHEN YOU JUST SIT ON IT":



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A RATHER typical song theme: A man goes to bar, drinks, and sends people to the hospital. Ukulele and tambourine.

"IF YOU DON'T WANT A RAZOR FIGHT" LYRICS:

So the pub is a little battered
So the bartender's arm is broke
So the jukebox has been smashed
So the kitchen's full of smoke
So there's shattered glass around you
So there's been a little scrum
If you do not want things broken
Then you shouldn't give me rum

So there are police now taking pictures
So the owner is morose
So there are women that are crying
So there are men now comatose
What do you want me to say, mate
I ain't going to express chagrin
If you do not care for blood, mate
Then you shouldn't give me gin

So there are bandages on the floor
So there's a man who will wake with scars
He'll think twice the from here on out
Who he wants to fight in bars
And any liquor at all, mate
You should know is a little risky
And if you do not want a razor fight
Then you shouldn't give me whiskey

LISTEN TO "IF YOU DON'T WANT A RAZOR FIGHT":



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43 DAYS into the RocknRolla Diet. I weighed 185.5 pounds when I got on the scale, a loss of almost 19 pounds since I first began. I am not dropping pounds as quickly as I expected, and I think the reason for that is that I must guesstimate how many calories I am taking in, and may be eating more than I expect. The next iteration of this diet will involve those diet cookies and shakes, which will give me a more certain count, but it's about a month yet until I finish this specific diet, and I am not going to worry about it until then. I am losing, and that's satisfying enough. At my current weight, my Body Mass Index has me as being just slightly overweight (25.9, to be specific). 25 is considered overweight, while anything beneath that, down to 18.5, is considered "normal." Mind you, I still have quite a few pounds to go before I reach that -- at my height, I won't reach a BMI of 18 until I weight 179.

Body Mass Index is an interesting thing. It's a rather simple calculation, and there are BMI calculators all over the Internet (here's one), but it is a rough measurement. It's simple equation based on height and weight, which means it leaves out a number of elements that play an important role in someone's weight. For one thing, it leaves out body type. I have a slight build, and carry weight differently than my brothers, who are broad-framed. I look somewhat bloated at 150 pounds, while my brothers, who are inches smaller than me, can carry that weight with no problem. Additionally, BMI doesn't take into account muscle mass, which is heavier than fat -- notoriously, very athletic people can end up with a BMI that suggests they are obese when, in fact, they haven't much fat on them at all. Nonetheless, BMI is useful, as long as its limitations are recognized. If you have a BMI significantly below 18.5, there is a good chance you may be underweight. Similarly, if your BMI is over 30 and you are not an athlete, there is a pretty good chance you are medically obese.

I have based my target weight on the Body Mass Index. I am shooting for the bottom end of what the index considers a healthy weight, at least to start with -- once my diet in finished, I intend to start exercising rather rigorously, and will not mind if my weight starts to rise due to new muscle. My target weigh is 140, which would give me a BMI of 19.5. So that means I have 45.5 pounds yet to lose, which seems like a lot. It's probably for the best, though, as this project wouldn't be very interesting unless I got the chance to try out several diets.

On exercise: Every diet book recommends exercising while you diet. It boosts your metabolism and muscle consumes more calories than fat, they tell us. Additionally, dieting causes you to lose some muscle, and you want to replace that. I have decided, for the most part, to ignore this advice (I have been walking quite a lot more, which is a sort of exercise). It's not because I consider this bad advice; it is very good advice. It is because I have a tendency to tackle too many things at once, and I often have a very hard time completing projects as a result. The last time I dieted, I also exercised, and it all got a bit overwhelming for me after a while, and I stopped both. It is hard to change too many habits at once. I will start to exercise when I reach my target weight -- in fact, I will make a project out of it, or a series of projects, as is my way. But, for now, simple weight loss is the goal.

More Rock Star Skinny.

ON APRIL 2 of 2005, I heard church bells from the St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square. That, in and of itself, is not unusual, as the church bells regularly chime out the time. However, these bells came between the hours, when they ordinarily wouldn't ring. "Oh," I thought, "Pope John Paul II must be dead."

And so he was. It is one of the things about the French Quarter that sometimes reminds you that it is a very old place. It's one of the places in the world where you're going to find out about the death of a pope via tintinnabulation of church bells before you hear it from any other source. Later that day, I found these candles set out on the ground, ringing an image of John Paul II, a marker identifying the promenade in front of the Cathedral as Place John Paul II, so named after the Pope visited New Orleans in September of 1987.

TRUE STORIES of the ocean. Just a ukulele here.

"HORRIBLE THINGS WHAT LIVE IN THE SEA" LYRICS:

There are things what every sailor knows
Truths upon which we all agree
Put a silver coin beneath the mast
Or this voyage will be the last
And there are horrible things what live in the sea

There's the viperfish with his needle teeth
He stares at you as he glides beneath
It's a long and a lean fish
And a smart and a mean fish
And one bit the leg off Boatswain Keith

What a monstrous thing is the pelican eel
With a mouth big enough to gulp down a seal
Many a man at sea, fallen overboard
Finds a gaping mouth is his reward
And what once a sailor is now a meal

A mighty schooner, sailing south
Might be a victim of the megamouth
He will start at the aft and move to the fore
Chewing, chewing, and chewing more
And he'll swallow as much as his maw allows

There's the ogrefish with his vicious bite
And the coffinfish who swells when he fights
The blue-ringed octopus with his deadly sting
And the blobfish is a horrible thing
And the Chimaera with his poisoned spine
And the collosal squid that stalks the brine
And makes snacks of the great white whale
There are real monsters waiting for those what sail

There are things what every sailor knows
Truths upon which we all agree
Don't look back when you say goodbye
And St. Elmo's fire means you're going to die
And there are horrible things what live in the sea

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ANDREW FOX is the author of The Fat White Vampire Blues and Bride of the Fat White Vampire, two books set in New Orleans that riff both on A Confederacy of Dunces and the novels of Anne Rice. In this photo, he reads from his book in a small garden in the French Quarter.

BUNNY ZIPS trough a tunnel under highway 169 in Belle Plaine, Minnesota.

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WHAT HAS come up missing?
What lately has been taken?
You've lost something, haven't you?
It's true, or am I mistaken?
What happened to that pudding
That mother sent along to school?
What happened to that blanket
That was left out by the pool?
Where happened to Lacy's dolly
With her dress of pink and teal?
Well, Jenny took them, don't you know?
Because Jenny likes to steal.

Don't leave anything by her
Or it will end up in her pocket
And then into her top drawer
With your lipstick and your locket
And the book that mother gave you
And a postcard from last year
If it something that Jenny wants
She'll take it if its near
She grabs apples out of lunches
And eats all except the peel
And then she'll take money for dessert
Because Jenny likes to steal

If it's missing from a garage
It has wound up under her bed
There's three bicycles and a baseball
And a wagon, fire engine red,
and marbles and horseshoes
And a complete badminton kit
Which Jenny has never played with
She just likes to stare at it
And there is stuff that makes no sense
An old retainer? A flat wheel?
But don't ask her why she wanted it
Because Jenny likes to steal

One awful day last autumn
Jenny was reaching for a purse
When she felt two hands upon her
And then she felt something much worse
She felt a sack around her
As she was carried away that day
Nobody knows just what happened
Nobody knows just what to say
All we do is stare at her room
Crammed full of ill-got things
All we do is wonder about her
As we dig through the rings
And the necklaces and the lipstick
And the compacts that she took
We read stories of children kidnapped
We read such stories in a book
It tells they are put to work
In groups of child thieves
We ask is this what has happened to her?
And then we cry out and we grieve
And bitter tears fall from us
From eyes tearful and swollen
Because Jenny, who liked to steal
herself, at last, was stolen

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MEET YOUNG BILLY, who sneezes and sneezes
He plays in the pepper just as long as he pleases
He's a messy little lad with messy little ways
And a messy little mind to fill messy little days
Leave him be twenty minutes and he'll muck up the sink
Let him be for twenty more, and what do you think?
He'll have flour in the bathtub and soap in the kitchen,
He'll feed chili to the puppies till they howl with their itchin'
He'll trample mud in the hallways and spill ink on the stairs
Spread peanut butter on the teevee and stick taffy in his hair
And then it's to the pepper, Billy shakes it while he's turning,
The air is clouded with its stinging and its hurting and its burning!
And he sneezes and he laughs and then he sneezes once again
Pepper filling up the study, pepper filling up the den
Pepper in the attic, in the basement, in the hall
Billy's knee deep in the pepper, it is climbing up the walls
You can hardly see the boy now, he's buried to his chin
And with another laugh the pepper rises and it buries him
And then comes a calm moment, as Billy laughs no more
The house falls strangely silent, not a sound escapes its doors
And then comes a small noise, a single quiet sigh
A piffle, a mere sniffle, and another, by and by.
And then the pepper stirs, and it swirls round and round
Revealing Billy's face now from within the pepper mound
He's turning strangely pinkish and his fingers pinch his nose
He frowns and rolls his eyes and stands on his tippy toes
A sneeze is building in him, but not a sneeze he's known before
This sneeze is bigger than a typhoon with its mighty typhoon roar
It is bigger than a twister with its gusting, busting bellows
It is bigger than even that, yes, it is enormous, yes, dear fellows
And Billy cannot hold it and the sneeze flies forth from him
Knocking the doors off his house with its mighty rushing wind
The roof flies off the building and lands some yards away
Pepper rises to blacken the sky until peppery night replaces day
A hundred miles away strangers are shaken by the noises
The pepperiest sneeze ever from the pepperiest of peppery boyses
And though they searched for weeks young Billy was never found
Some say that he sneezed so hard he flew right through the ground
Emerging at last in China, where he wanders, always weeping
Never pausing to ever rest, always walking, never sleeping
Running up to strangers crying out pathetic pleas
Which he communicates using signs because he speaks no Cantonese
Billy begs them favor a favor, will they, will they, will they, won't?
He asks if they have pepper.
But, of course, they don't.

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JIMMY JONES had a temper, and everybody knew it
It you made Jimmy unhappy, oh, you would live to rue it
He would holler and stamp his feet if he couldn't get his way
And when he grew cross enough, well, Jimmy ran away
He wouldn't go very far, of course, just a block or sometimes two
But he'd pack up all his things -- his comics and kazoo --
And tie them in a bindle and then throw it in a sack
And then march like an angry hobo with his possessions on his back
He'd march past his weeping mother, and he'd smile to hear her cry
And then march past his poor father, as the man would dab his eye
And say, Jimmy, boy, don't do it! Jimmy, it's not right!
Where do you plan to go from here? How will you last the night!
And Jimmy would pause and puff his chest and say, father, it's you fault:
I'll sleep tonight on the cold earth beneath heaven's merciless vault.
It will be a cold night, and dangerous, indeed, dad,
I’ll battle wolves and maybe coyotes, a fight that's hard and bad
And if I make it to the morning I'll be a hungry and wretched lad
And this is all your fault, you know, because you went and made me mad.

Then Jimmy would step outside with his cap atop his head
And he'd nibble at his provisions: a slice of apple and some bread
And he'd walk across the street, and turn and face his home
And think cruel thoughts toward those inside, and then Jimmy, he would roam.
He'd walk down to the drugstore and would buy a sarsaparilla
And sip it as he read a comic about an ape man and gorilla
Both lived in darkest Africa in a tall and stately tree
And Jimmy would look at the oaks outside and think "That's the home for me!"
And he'd go outside and climb one and then marvel at the view
He could see his school on one block, and see further, another two
And at the end of these three blocks was a street he'd never seen
And so Jimmy climbed back down and poured his soda in his canteen
An he marched those three blocks, marched further than he ever had
He marched there, feet shod in tennies, his chest windbreaker clad
His pants were stained with mud now, his pants, cotton and plaid
He was dressed for an adventure, because somebody made him mad.

The third block had a patch of earth, and railroad tracks behind it
And Jimmy felt quite proud of himself that he had managed to find it
And he sat along the rails and he sipped his sarsaparilla
And he nibbled on some candies, both chocolate and vanilla
Then he heard a peculiar cough, gruff and lacking social graces
And he turned and saw two men there with tanned, unshaven faces
One said, "Is this a runaway, what have we got here?"
The other Looked Jimmy up and down, his face alarmingly near
He said, "He's brought along a bindle stick and his pants are caked with dirt,
And he's dressed for rotten weather -- look, there's a jacket over his shirt!
He's a hobo in the making, friend, and we're just the ones to make him;
And here comes our train now, friend, quickly, grab and take him!"
Jimmy Jones let out a cry of fear, but his parents were too far to hear
And if you want to know where he is now, well, let me tell you, dear,
If you listen to the railroad as it passes quickly by
From inside the railcars you can hear a mournful cry
It's Jimmy, don't you know it, he's older, yes, he grew
Up among the hobos, where he cooked them hobo stew
He added salt to their stale bread and he poured their cherry wine
And for twenty years he has done, this, always weeping, always crying
Saying, "What did I do to earn this? Was I selfish? Was I bad?
Why couldn't I have treated better my poor mother and poor dad?
And now I'm doomed to be a hobo cook, a poor fate for this lad!
Why did I ever run away?
I should never
Have gotten
So mad."

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DO YOU HEAR that crying?
Do you hear it? Do you?
There's a cruel girl that's at work here
In her pink and lacy tutu
Cruel eyes they peer out now
Under a blond and pig-tailed hairdo
It's Meg, Meg who teases
Her words they strike like kung fu
She points at her younger brother
And declares he must be cuckoo
And she laughs when he starts crying
And says "You're crazy -- crazy -- too true!
Don't try to deny it brother
I really don't want to argue.
They will come to take you away soon
And lock you up in Belleview
Go ahead and cry all you want to
Your crying it won't help you
When you're crazy there's nothing for it
But to send a van to get you!"

She goes up to the window
And says, "You hear that van now, don't you?
They have sent it up North now
From the hospital in Belleview.
There are men that will come here soon
With a straight jacket meant for you
And they will tie your arms together
With knots you cannot undo."
Meg's brother he sits there weeping,
What else? What else can he do?
He's been teased a thousand times
A thousand times called cuckoo
A thousand terrifying promises
Of a van that comes from Belleview
And a thousand tears have fallen
Because what? What else can he do?
When Meg she teases him
He stays teased, that's what he do.

And there is a knock that knocks away now
Their house's door it comes unto
And Meg she looks surprised now
And she says, "What? Who is that? Who?"
Her brother says "Don't answer it!"
And she scowls and says, "Poo poo poo!"
But her brother cries "It's the men!
It's the men that come from Belleview."
And she calls him a silly goose
And the door -- oh Meg! -- she goes to.
She flings the front door open
And a butterfly net it comes through
And it wraps around poor Meg now
Trapping Meg, her pig tails, her tutu.
And two men in white they stand there
And they call out "We're from Belleview!"
And Meg she starts to weep,
And she cries, "What? What did I do?"
And the men they say, "You teased.
You called your brother cuckoo.
We've got a padded cell set up now
And we have set it up for who? You.
Meg, who teased her brother,
Tell your brother a-dee-you."

What happened next I can't tell.
Who can tell? Who? Can you?
Who knows what becomes of girls
Who call their brothers cuckoo?
Who knows what happens to them
When they go away to Belleview?
All I know is Meg don't tease now
She don't tease, that much O is true.
And a van it roams the streets
And you know that van now, don't you?
It has two men and a butterfly net,
And you'll watch for it, now, won't you?
You'll think about it when teasing.
You will think about it? Why don't you?
Because the knock that comes at the door
It might come for who next? Who?

You?

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YOUNG DOLLY LAMBERT she thought it absurd
That children, it was said, should be seen and not heard
So she spoke out of turn and she said whatever she wanted
She spoke poorly to her brothers, how she mocked them, how she taunted
She snickered while in church and she muttered while in classes
She made jokes about a thin girl with freckles and with glasses
She talked back to her teachers in a high and angry voice
She called her father "Rudolph" and she called her mother "Joyce"
She was often on the telephone playing strange and terrible pranks
Indeed, Dolly would say about anything, except "please," alas, or "thanks."
And her voice it grew louder, and her voice it grew quite shrill
Until anybody who could hear her would grow dizzy and grow ill
And they told her to be quiet, but Dolly she got louder
Until her voice was shrill enough to shatter windows into powder
And finally it grew so high that dogs alone could hear her
And they yelped whenever she spoke, and they whimpered,
and they feared her.
But when Dolly spoke to humans all they heard was a high-pitched moan
Whoever Dolly spoke to would shrug and leave her alone
At supper poor Dolly had neither butter nor any cheeses
She asked for one or the other, she begged, she said, "pleases."
And then Dolly wanted pudding but her mother did not hear
She gave helpings to the brothers, but to Dolly, nothing, dear.
And Dolly she slept hungry, and Dolly woke up crying
But nobody could hear the poor girl with her high and noiseless sighing
Then when Dolly washed her face she was in for another fright
Somehow she had turned translucent in the middle of the night
As she held her hand before her she could see the mirror through it
And she tried to call for help, but of course, she couldn't do it
Dogs heard her frightened yelping and they howled too in fear
But nobody else answered Dolly, for nobody else could hear.
As she watched herself in the looking glass, she slowly disappeared
And as she faded from this world she wrote with soap upon the mirror
She wrote, "Children who are noisy, there's a lesson here to learn
When you're speaking when you oughtn't, when you're speaking out of turn
If you feel a ghostly hand on you, and hear a high-pitched,
whispered word.
It is I, Dolly, shushing you, I who is neither seen nor heard."

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DAY 38 OF MY DIET. I weighed myself on Thursday, but my scale was once again in the mood to prevaricate, and so claimed I had lost no weight in the past seven days. Apparently. my scale believes I lose weigh in the way that children grow, or, at least, what I understand of how they grow. A few years back I read that children don't just grow continuously, but will stay at once height for a while, get into a bad mood, presumably clench their fists and throw their heads back to reveal eyes that have suddenly turned green, and spontaneously grow and inch or two. I do the opposite: I stay at one weight for a while, and then I get on the scale and, without warning, I am five pounds lighter. Also, my eyes don't turn green.

So be it. I don't trust my lying scale, but I do trust the fact that clothes I purchased a few months ago, which were somewhat tight when I bought them, now hang or slide off me. I am dwindling in size, and I can see it. The shape of my face is becoming more defined, whereas my silhouette is becoming less rounded and narrower. And so I will just soldier on, checking in with my scale now and then out of curiosity to see what new mistruths it will try on me, but otherwise satisfied by my progress.

One of the things this diet has taught me is how to distinguish between hunger and other things that are easily mistaken for hunger. And there is a difference between being pecking and experiencing The Hunger. I generally don't eat until I reach a state that a few months ago I would have described as ravenous. But I'm not ravenous. I'm just genuinely hungry, rather than responding to a myriad of other impulses that aren't hunger, but feel like it. Here is a brief list of feelings that I have mistaken for hunger in the past:

1. Thirst
2. Stomach shrinking
3. Gas
4. Boredom
4. Walking past a candy store
5. Caffeine withdrawal
6. Seeing any sort of cake
7. Watching television commercials about food
8. Having a bad taste in my mouth
9. Reading a cookbook
10. Seeing other people eat

There are many more things I could add to this list, most involving candy. When you only eat 950 calories per day, though, you never eat just because you want food. You eat when you're genuinely hungry. And that has taken some getting used to.

That being said, even my real hunger is decreasing. I find I go longer and longer without thinking about food, and, at the end of the day, am sometimes well below the 950 calories I planned to eat, and must have a Special K Bar or a fruit cup to get myself above 800 calories.

At some point, I will be going back to eating 2200 calories, or whatever it takes to maintain my skinnier weight. I have a feeling that I am going to feel like I am overeating by a considerably margin -- it's more than twice what I am eating now. But, then, once I have reduced my body's supply of fat by enough, I expect my body will start hitting me with The Hunger more frequently. That moment is months and months and months away, though, so I need not worry about it too much just now.

More Rock Star Skinny.

I'M NOT ONE to gloat over things that are accomplished merely by spending money. There's no real challenge to it, unless it is expensive, and then the only challenge is to save the money -- or, more often, to pay off the debt. Spending is something we Americans do especially well or spectacularly poorly, depending on your point of view, and just buying something or paying to have something done is not so much an accomplishment as it is a gift you give yourself.

Nonetheless, some of my goals will be completed mostly by just spending money, as with this one, and I shall mark them when they are completed. In this instance, I bought a door bar to stick underneath my door handle, which makes it extra hard to break in. This is one of the goals I had listed under "safety," and I have a lot of things listed under there, many of them the sorts of things you complete merely by writing a check. This is also the case with paying off debts and giving money to charity, which I have also included in my goals, because not all of my goals are about improving myself as a person, but simply getting done what needs to be done.

I occasionally go on these safety kicks. I think it is a good idea to be prepared in case of emergency, and the reason for this is pretty simple: I was in Los Angeles for the riots and New Orleans for Hurricane Katrina, and, in both instances, left the city as a result (Los Angeles for the duration of the riots, New Orleans forever, or, at least, until I feel safe enough to move back.) And so I got a little bar that makes it a lot harder to kick in my door. I don't expect that I will ever actually need it, because what are the circumstances in which it would be necessary? An attack from a murderous lunatic? Mass riots coupled with home entry and murders? A zombie invasion? It's not likely. But, then, it didn't seem likely that the levees would fail in New Orleans. The door bar cost very little money, and so I bought it, and if the zombie invasion ever does happen, I'm ready.

More 101 Things in 1001 Days.

LUX INTERIOR DIED TODAY. He was 52 or 60, depending on who you ask; his Wikipedia biography has him at 60, which is surprising. I saw him perform 20 years ago, and I suppose he might have been 40 at the time, but, with his lean and muscular body stripped almost naked on the stage of First Avenue, a microphone literally jammed in his mouth, prowling the stage and accenting his songs with ferocious kicks and jabs, he seemed much younger. He seemed like a teenage punk, which is exactly how he started.

The band that Lux formed with his wife Poison Ivy, The Cramps, is one that I have shied away from writing about for fear of the sheer volume of material they produced. With most bands, a discerning fan of the supernatural in pop music can pick out one or two songs that are worth talking about, usually released as a novelty. With The Cramps, where to start? They composed their own instant trash classics, singing lustily about shambling monsters, teenage werewolves, and sex crazed teens over primitive rock and roll inspired by the two and three chord garage masterpieces of the Sixties. Additional, they were the original archeologists of the genre: In Re/Search's book Incredibly Strange Music, Lux recounts how he and Poison Ivy used to obsessive troll for lost platters, in the way that old jazzbos used to seek out forgotten 78s. They would go door to door in bad neighborhoods, knocking and asking if the residents had any weird old records they wanted to sell. The Cramps brought many forgotten songs back into the limelight, or introduced them to a world that had ignored them the first time around. There is a collection of CDs -- at least four by now -- titled Songs the Cramps Taught Us, consisting of these forgotten rockers, from Ronnie Cook's "Goo Goo Muck," which became one of The Cramp's signature songs, to The Fendermen's literally hysterical "Mule Skinner Blues," in which the singer cackles incessantly throughout the song.

Lux and Poison Ivy, along with the ever-changing lineup of the rest of The Cramps, took an amazingly diverse collection of cultural bric-a-brac and welded it together into a complete aesthetic. Theirs was a world of bawdy puns, b-movie monsters, z-movie juvenile delinquents, finger-popping beatniks, E.C Comics, transgressive sexuality, and leather-clad punk, all narrated with a snarl over spare, mean, gloriously and deliberately unsophisticated rock and roll. And, best of all, they were fun. If anything, they were the real heirs to Ghoulardi, the lab coat-clad hipster of Cleveland's Shock Theatre, whose deadpan smart-assed worldview and mocking motto ("stay sick") The Cramps borrowed in entirety. They had a fine sense of the ridiculous -- my favorite example of this is in the song "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" in which Lux, narrating the experience of a young lycanthrope who nonetheless suffers the typical maladies of youth ("Braces onmy fangs," etc.) at one point gives up describing his experiences in favor of simply growling inarticulately, not simply because he has transformed into a wolf, but also, from the sounds of things, because the experience of being a juvenile wolfman is so frustrating that there is no way to express it but with animal noises.

RIP, Lux. You will be missed.

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I'VE BEEN PLOWING THROUGH many of my smaller and easier tasks, but I just now completed one of my really big goals: organizing my photos. I've had a digital camera for about five years now, and I tend to take a lot of photos. When I remember, I go through and delete the ones I don't want -- the ones that are badly framed, or blurry, and just boring. But I don't always remember. And so I wound up with 16,000 photos. Worse still, the software I was using sometimes would save photos on my external hard drive and sometimes on my computer's hard drive. And sometimes I would import photos from elsewhere and save them in a half dozen other files. So I had files scattered all over the place, and endless duplicates, and thousands of photos that there was really no need for me to keep. And organizing them was complicated by the fact that the software I used to organize it was slow. Really slow. Deleting a photo took, on average, 20 seconds, and even then I couldn't tell if I was deleting it from the hard drive or just removing it from view in the software (the latter, it turned out). On top of that, Coco takes a lot of photos, and some of the photos on my computer were hers, while some of the photos on her computer were mine.

I began by importing all of my photos, from every single file I had, into iPhoto (later I also added in the photos from Coco's computer, but that necessitated buying a flash drive that could hold thousands of photos). The iPhoto software duplicated every photo into one file, and my external hard drive was already severely overtaxed, and so sometimes I could only import a few photos before having to delete something else. The whole process took about seven hours. And then began the hard work: going through 16,000 photos and deleting the ones I didn't want. This took an entire week, but eventually I got my photos down from 16,000 to a much more manageable 4,000, freeing up 16 gigabytes on my external hard drive (and 20 gigabytes on my computer's hard drive) in the process. Finally, I took advantage of the fact that you can tag photos in iPhoto and create smart virtual photo albums based on the tags. That took three days. In fact, the collection still feels a little rough, but I can go in and delete a few more and fiddle with the tagging system until the cows come home. The main priority was to get my photos down to the ones that I was pretty certain I wanted to keep and to make sure they were all in the same file, and it feels quite good to have completed this task. It will be easier if I make certain to regularly go through all new photos as I take them and do the same thing, but this isn't very likely to happen. The smart thing would be to regularly schedule a time to go through my photos, say, once every several months. I think I shall add this to my calendar, so I don't forget. If I ever have to go through 16,000 photos again, it might kill me.

More 101 Things in 1001 Days.

ONE OF THREE cemeteries in New Orleans named St. Louis, this is the only one that is open for tourists. One of the famed "cities of the dead" in the city, this cemetery is filled with above-ground tombs that were built, according to the popular legend, because the water tables are so high in the city that if you put a corpse under the ground, it might float back up. This is mostly legend: the above-ground tombs are based on a style of tombs already popular in France and Spain, the two groups that first colonized New Orleans.

This cemetery is New Orleans' oldest, having been built in 1789. There are many famous New Orleaneans buried in this cemetery, including a chess champion and the city's first African-American mayor, But the most famous resident's grave is the easiest to find -- just look for the tomb that is covered with x's drawn with pencil or crayon. This is reputed to be the grave of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, who presided over ritual practices of the Haitian religion during the 1800s. Her story is, of course, more complicated than that. For one thing, it seems likely that there were actually two Mary Laveaus, mother and daughter, and the latter took over for the former without anybody actually noticing the swap had happened. For another, Marie Laveau may not actually be buried in this grave, but that doesn't stop people from visiting. In New Orleans, the myth about a thing is often much stronger than the facts.

The photo at the top of the page is of a mass tomb, meant for burial of people who had entered burial societies, usually through a workmen's guild. It is rather famous for having been the site of the cemetery LSD freak-out in the movie Easy Rider, which was filmed in the cemetery without permission, and to this day the rumor persists that it was actor/director Dennis Hopper who stole the head off this statue.

IT IS HARD to pinpoint the birthplace of any artistic movement, especially one as broadly American as jazz, but, if anyplace has a credible claim to being the exact spot where the genre first came into being, it is Congo Square, the tiled ground of which is pictured above.

This is a section of Louis Armstrong Park in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, just across Rampart from the French Quarter. European colonists to New Orleans generally gave their slaves the day off on Sunday, and, although slaves were forbidden from meeting in large groups anywhere else, it was permitted in "Place de Negres," "Place Publique," which was later called "Circus Square" or "Place Congo"; this was a little patch of earth just outside the Quarter, where they set up a market. The slaves often sang and danced there, and it was a popular visiting place for their colonial masters, who were then as fascinated by the culture of their transplanted African slaves as white Americans are by the culture of the slave's descendants today. These Congo Square performances inspired composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk to incorporate the rhythms and some of the melodies of the slaves into his own compositions, most famously "Bamboula," which was one of the first examples of a blending of European compositional theory with African indigenous music that came to define jazz. Although jazz really developed a few blocks down in the city's red light district, Storyville (now a series of public housing projects), since colonial times, Congo Square has continues to be a performance venue for the music of New Orleans.