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The girl wearing the raincoat is running to catch up with her mom who is already in the house. The girl is going to the store to get candy, then she is going home. The girl is screaming in the park for her mom because she wants her mom to take her home. She is yelling for Daddy and Grandpa. She is screaming and looking for her whole family. Mom said she could play outside all day. Even in the dark?

She is screaming because she is happy. It's her birthday. She was surprised she got an X-box. She is screaming because there was a fire. The box has something she likes. There is a fire on the bed. They gave her a prize.

The coyote misses his mom. He is looking for food. He is looking out for his family. He is really hungry, hasn't eaten for days. He ate food off the floor. There is chicken. He's taking a bath.

My pokey slipped off the rock and fell on his tail and broke his leg.

This is a street. This is where the cars went and there is a hole. It is not a good thing. You can fall in it. You can get stuck and stay down there and be scared. Cars fall in it. People are running and have to take the bus. They went in another car that is not stuck.

The square in the center is where the street broke. When the green lights up, the cars can go. The car gets broken when it hits the hole.

The boy and girl are whispering. They are saying, "I'm not your friend. I'm going somewhere else. She's ugly. She's bullying somebody." They're being rude. They're being happy. They're blaming people.

They are telling a secret. She is telling him not to be this other person's friend. The boy is telling the girl, "I'm still your friend." They are telling secrets about their other friends. He is telling a secret about his grandma. She is telling a secret about your cousin.

The cheetahs are touching each other. Cheetahs have to eat people. They are looking for people. They are trying to hide so they can eat people. The cheetah's hand is on the other cheetah. She says to chase someone and eat him. Maybe this cheetah is the girl and this cheetah is the boy.

The zebra is hugging the other zebra. The cheetah is hugging her baby. The zebras are looking for their friends. The cheetah cub is hugging the other cheetah to help him look for food. Oh! They're cousins. They play together. They're saying, "Roar, you're my friend." "Roar, you're my cousin." "I'm going to the animal shop." "Where are the zebras so I can eat them?" The animals are looking for their friends. They are waiting for play time.

The girl is walking to the tree to climb it. Big tree. The girl is trying to feel if it's soft or not soft. Does the tree have limbs that will help you climb it? In a forest, she is grown up. The tree is like a giant's leg.

That tree is too big to climb. But she can climb by the ridges. She is going to bang her head and get sent to jail. The girl is trying to climb the tree because she got something stuck up there. She was playing soccer with her friend. It's time for her to learn how to climb. She is almost a teenager and then she can be happy.

--by Frank Kogan (sorta). 2015.
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As some of you know, I've performed in a number of rock bands, though my first group was a folk trio. We were high-schoolers playing a student dance, doing rousing sea chanteys and battle anthems in a headlong, banjo-picking style. We excited the crowd. (I was in elementary school, age 11 or 12, when I first came up with the idea; can't say I had much of a clue yet what would excite an eventual high-school crowd.)

In early 1967, just when I'd turned 13, John Lennon quit the Beatles to form a band with me. I had two intense, emotional melodies that became hit songs. We toured the country, playing smaller halls, despite Lennon's fame. The small venues fit the sparer, more emotional music I had in mind. The two melodies did in fact exist; I remember one of them still, though I'm not sure it's all that intense and emotional anymore. Neither of the melodies ever got any words or became real songs. The only actual song of mine up to that point was a funny one called "Out on the Autostrada" that I’d composed at age 10 on a trip from Rome to Sicily. Its lyrics, in their entirety, were "Out on the Autostrada/We put some ham in their chowder," auto pronounced "ow-toe" in the Italian way, chowder pronounced "chow-duh" in the Boston way.

I don't distinctly remember the bands I put together right after the Lennon one. I'm sure there were many. I do remember that at age 16 I briefly had a band with Grace Slick. Grace was a goddess to me at the time, though a very scary one. Lots of male rock stars were up on my wall. She was the only woman among them. I was in awe of her and completely infatuated but very intimidated too. "Either go away or go all the way in" really unnerved me. She was beautiful, but I don't know how much I was attracted to her. I almost never have sex fantasies about stars, anyway. I prefer people I know. I had a masturbation daydream about Grace, once, that eventually succeeded, but it was work. I kept picturing her hard unblinking stare; I didn't know if she'd relent to actually liking me. Maybe if I were to meet the real Grace — loud, emotional ex-drunk that she's supposed to be — my fantasy life with her would improve.

After the Grace band, I was the star )

Chin-ups

Jul. 17th, 2010 06:14 am
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The Phys Ed teacher said, "Time for pull-ups," but the girls told her, "No, we're gonna do chin-ups." "What?" the teacher said. "Chin-ups? Those are for little girls. That's grammar school," contempt dripping from her voice. "Chin-ups are cool," said Nia. "Chin-ups are Rihanna, are DeRulo, are r&b." "You want to do well," said the teacher threateningly, "You will do pull-ups. I'll be watching you."

Chanice was puzzled. She spoke in a low voice to her friend. "Nia," she asked. "Aren't chin-ups and pull-ups the same thing?" Nia tried to look aghast. "The same thing? Are you kidding?" "Well, what's the difference?" "The difference is in what it feels like. In a chin-up, you're getting your chin up over the bar, while in a pull-up you're pulling up with your arms." "But to get your chin over the bar you pull with your arms too," said Chanice. Nia tried to look disgusted. "It's the ethos," she said, not quite knowing if she knew what "ethos" meant. "Chin-ups belong to a whole greater ethos; it's like an entire cultural bunch of families and cousins, skating and drawing masterpieces, all with you as your chin is going over the bar. But pull-ups, well, they're just—" she paused and searched for the right word. "Pull-ups are gym socks. It's like eggplant. Would you eat eggplant?" "I do eat eggplant," said Chanice. "No you don't," said Nia. "You eat aubergine." She wasn't sure she'd pronounced it correctly. "OH-ber-jean" or "OH-ber-jine"? "I eat what?" Chanice asked. "Aubergine" said Nia with more confidence. "Just as dark, just as purple, but while you eat it you don't have to be thinking you got your aubergine from the same field where they grow liverplant, and gizzardplant, and neckplant, and breastplant." Nia shivered, as if in horror.

"What are you two talking about?" The Phys Ed teacher called.

"Chicken," said Chanice.

"Do your pull-ups," said the teacher.

Tattoos

May. 20th, 2010 03:19 pm
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"The old man grunted," he said to himself. He was an old man, and he'd just grunted, and it struck him that that was what old men in stories did, they grunted, or wheezed, or cackled, and looked askance. "The old man grunted." This time he said it aloud. A girl in her mid twenties laughed gaily. He hadn't seen that anyone was near him. "And what was the man grunting about?" she asked him. He noticed she'd omitted the word "old." Kind of her, he thought. "The tattoo shop," he said. "Nothing against tattoos. I almost got a tattoo when I was in the Navy. But this used to be a record store." He pointed. "Now it's for tattoos. Used to be that people went out and got music. Elvis, Carl Perkins, Dinah Washington. There'd be loudspeakers, the melody pouring into the street. Now music is hidden on hard drives. People wear tattoos, music for the eyes, I suppose, but the rhythm is gone from their walk." He stopped. "You don't have tattoos, do you?" The girl laughed. "Several, on my shoulder." She rolled up her sleeve.

Fire

Sep. 24th, 2009 08:07 am
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The waitress was a cheerful woman )
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The best of the things I wrote for Paper Thin Walls:

review of Barr's The Song Is The Single )
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I used to write for a site called Paper Thin Walls, which stopped publishing last year, and subsequently the server with its archives melted down, apparently; in any event, its content is no longer online. So I'm going to post a couple of my reviews here, the first being this review of and email interview with Nicole Atkins, her responses being something special, I think:

Nicole Atkins' The Way It Is )

Interview with Nicole Atkins )

Video )
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Frank and Joe Hardy were sitting idly at the soda fountain in a small drugstore. It was the midst of the Great Depression, and the drugstore wasn't doing great business. Frank and Joe were two of only three people at the counter. The third was a shifty-eyed man sitting three seats away. Joe wondered if this fellow might be a visitor from another planet, but he didn't mention this to Frank, since he wasn't sure if Frank even knew the concept "visitor from another planet." That was more along Tom Swift's line of work, and of course the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift belonged to a different series of books. Joe wasn't supposed to have anything to do with Tom Swift, but he had snuck off and participated in a few Tom Swift stories anyway, under an assumed name. Tom didn't mind, but strait-laced Frank would take it amiss - or would be dumbfounded, anyway. In any event, if the character farther down the counter really was from another planet, that would be a first for a Hardy Boys mystery. People from other planets weren't allowed in Hardy Boys mysteries - at least Joe didn't think they were. Joe wondered if the man had seen him in one of Tom Swift's adventures and followed him back.

Suddenly the man spoke )

Portrait

May. 13th, 2009 10:05 pm
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Portrait )
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I Am Scared (the single edit, rather than the full-length album version)

On Monday I was scared, the next day was Tuesday and I was also scared, the day after that was Wednesday and I was as scared as I'd been on Tuesday. Then we jump to Thursday, and Thursday was a day of many fears. This led on to Friday, a day I approached with foreboding, and with good reason, for there were many things to be frightened of. But how about Saturday? Man, Saturdays make me uneasy, and not just the nighttime. Morning has its terrors, and lunch, well, lunch is no picnic, if you know what I mean, and afternoons, jeesh, they make me shiver. But after Saturday we had Sunday, a day I'd honestly rather forget; it wasn't one of calm and ease, I'll tell you that. And then there was Monday again, and Tuesday through Friday, and then the weekend, oh the weekend, I'd say more but this is the short version, so suffice to say it's Monday again and I'm scared.
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Keenan cupped her hands, and in her hands she held worlds. In one world the fingernail creatures would hold constant parties. Well, we might question whether these were what we would call parties, since it was in linking arms and dancing and doing something that they called "whooping it up" that the fingernail creatures created the Z-formula from which they drew sustenance. And if they didn't whoop with fervor the output of Z-formula would be meager and nutritionally deficient. So what they called "partying" and "whooping it up" we might think of as analogous to tilling the soil and growing the crops. In other words, partying was serious business: what we would call "work." Of course, they had fun when they worked, but what they meant by "fun" isn't what we mean by "fun." For us, fun means we are enjoying ourselves, while for the fingernail creatures fun means winning the approval of one's fellows. So when the question arose, "Are we having fun?" the only acceptable answer, the one that wasn't taken as an insult, was, "Yes, we are having fun. We are whooping it up."

This was just one of the many worlds that Keenan held in her hands )

Bob Dylan

Apr. 10th, 2009 11:24 am
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Paste's online version of the Dylan blurb I wrote for their best-living-songwriters issue back in '06 gets rid of the paragraph breaks, to the piece's detriment. So I'm reprinting here.

By the way, Dylan might well make my top ten but it was Paste who put him at the top. I'd probably have chosen Jagger-Richards (Paste's #12), or maybe Johansen-Thunders (not on their list). A still-living James Brown (#56, behind such titans as James Taylor, Sufjan Stevens, Ryan Adams, etc.) would have been in my top five and I'd have trouble defending my not ranking him number one (the designation being "best," not "favorite"). As for this decade, Timbaland and Collipark and Eminem and Simpson-Shanks-DioGuardi and Max Martin would all be contenders (none on the Paste list, of course), though for the last couple of years I'd say the spot is empty.

Whom would you guys choose?

#1 Bob Dylan )
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Performance Anxiety

We were performing anxiety. I was assigned to shiver. Jolene was assigned to hesitate. Gerard turned away. Bella chattered nervously. Ashlee giggled. Magnum acted tough. Isabel searched for excuses. Thomas tried to feel superior. Peter acted detached. Sally was engrossed in doing her nails.

He thought we were marvelous )

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