Sunday, May 25, 2003

"Girls Around a Mah Jongg Table Telling Tales of Fu Manchu" was a performance piece/poem I wrote for these pretty girls I know in Williamsburg after I saw them do a play. It essentially has the same structure as "Topless Girls Read Veblen" but is more demurely costumed and the sound track is more percussive. Clacky. The clackiness is something so far I have only imagined and scored, for I can't remember ever attending a live mah jongg game. I did a painting "Girls Around a Mah Jongg Table Telling Tales of Fu Manchu" but later it became another painting about playing electric slide guitars - playing steel - in Cowboyland. Then it became an advertisement for anarchism but Fu Mancu was still a guest star. An unwilling guest star I should think - I did not in this instance ask him - for Fu is anti-anarchical. He is very proud of his Academic Accomplishments. Fu is fiendish about spelling and grade point averages. I confess, dearest reader, that I'm into looking at naked girls. But I worry a lot about what the proper anarchist protocol for asking girls to get naked is. I don't want to hide behind some stupid fascist Title like Professor or Doctor or The Writer. Even Painter rather worries me. I just want to be a jazzboy. It would seem to me, from my scan of contemporary periodicals, that the ratings on naked girls must be high and high right through the demographic ranges, because the appearance - to my eye - of the "boy's" magazines, and the "girl's" magazines pretty much the same. The naked girls in the "girl's" magazines a little cuter, to my eye, maybe. I don't mind looking at pictures of naked boys. There's a picture of Yul Brynner (sp?) from when he was the Siam King that I have been promising my lovely and talented wife (RAGTIMETEXAS. COM) I should find for her the Seventeen years we've been married. It's a beautiful picture. Yul had a larger penis than I do. I'm sorry that things got painful for Yul at the end. I think Momma maybe saw Yul be the Siam King. I think maybe I remember that. I should get Momma a copy of that picture too. Ran into a neighbor on the street last night. He likes to Play Pictures too. He's working in the Medium of Photocopy with representations of naked Men. I am looking forward to seeing this latest work. I still smoke. Momma still smokes. I am inclined to believe there is something magical about tobacco but I hate myself every time I buy cigarettes because the History of the Tobacco Companies scares me. Maybe 'scare' is the wrong word - makes me curl my lip with hipster contempt to think that any man so skank he'd let the wearing of a suit and tie turn him into a cretinous corporate thug. Makes me sniffy like such a pretender to culture, no doubt bedecked with Academic Accomplishments and Fraternity Rings, actually smelt like dog doo doo. These days you have to be careful about the words "Boy" and "Men" when referencing art that deals with sexual relations twixt males. You know that Hipster Contempt hurts. The hipster I mean. That's why we speak of the Tragically Hip. It's a smurfin' curse but I'm not sure how contagious it is - anyway it means that I cannot responsibly have sex with children. I'm afraid to have lunch with them, afraid the Texas Medicine somebody (Bobbie Dillon?) put in my head will leak out and poison their lives. I have a notion that if I put a ukulele between me and the child it will prevent Texas Medicine leaching. For me, these days, 25 year olds are children. Naked babies make cute pictures and it used to be that you could say that without looking over your damn shoulder. If Sally Mann let me be naked in one of her pictures I promise I would be one beaming baby. Y'all might get grossed out but I'd be grooving. I wrote a story once for my Sissa and it was the Emperor's New Clothes except in mine Zip Coon miraculously appeared at the crucial moment and said: "Boy, be chill and don't be smurfing with somebody's livlihood. Truth-telling ain't appreciated by the mainstream and likely bring the Emperor's Thugs - his Police, his CIA, his Secret Homeland Maintenance Marauders - to bump on your head. Trust me: when the new fashion gets down nearer your grade level you gonna be thanking ol' Zip Coon that he extended to you the benefits of his learned skolarship." In New York City construction workers used to hoot and holler at girls scantily attired in an impolite and unwise way but I'm glad to say they seemed to have wised up. Boys should know that a scantily attired girl is a Bambi. Don't spook her. I remember a summer twilight at Barton Springs way back before there was a "Playgirl" and my Daddy speculating on what a "Playgirl" might look like and figuring that naked babies would get high ratings. Because of Petticoat Junction whenever I look upon New York from up high and I see all the different water tanks on top of the buildings - 'towers' I tend to call them because of where I'm from - I flash on skinny dipping and naked girls. Low ratings is what my MP3.Com site has. Way low numbers. The address is sorta hard: MP3.Com/quin_withey. There's a song on there I lifted off a Lightning Hopkins metaphor. "Twisted like a Ball of Twine." I wrote that song for a girl I used to know. She was way cute. One time we were chilling at this t.v. actress' place. I'm being pompous and new yorky mentioning that it was t.v. actress' place because it was just another little bitty Yorkville apartment but she really was in a t.v. show that year and she had a nice beast, a Maltese as I remember, and he was in that show too. We was chilling and being Frenz and I remember one girl passed around pictures of her and her then boyfriend naked and all the girls made noises indicating they thought the penis in these photographs was big. I was a little surprised because it did not look that big to me. Later on the Ball of Twine girl taught me a game called Spit. It's a cardgame. Afterwards I was long tortured by the performance piece I wrote "Strip Spit" because in those days I was worried that performance pieces wanted to be performed. But now I sort of wonder if all songs want to be sung. Some songs maybe think being sung is like work. Actually Ives told me that, but maybe now I understand it differently. The songs on MP3.Com/quin_withey, I don't think they'd mind being sung. If you happen to need a song you might want to wander by there. MP3.Com/quin_withey. Note the underscore. Koo's as "nekkid as a jay" when he walks out of Matthew Haney's cornfield. Y'all who pray, pray for Pee Wee. I think the West Houston Mob got it in for him. I'm gonna have Koo sing that Ball of Twine song and it's gonna make Beagle have an idea for a blue movie. 2:41:07 PM    comment []