Obscure Love

One site I visit several times a week is Obscure Sound where, unlike most music sites, I like about 85-90% of the tracks they feature. Today they have a great Valentine's Day mix. If you've not already made plans for the night, I recommend doing what I will be doing of downloading and playing this nifty little mix to enjoy over a glass of wine while reading a favorite new book, in mine a biography of Borges. That's what I call true love, though I don't really feel one bit lonely, not even alone.

UPDATE: Adding to my pleasure this V-Day, I was able to track down what I think must be the last available copy of the Criterion Eclipse Series release of the Lubitsch Musicals which was well worth the search since its release on Tuesday when it was nabbed by everyone else at the six outlets I scoured around our little berg. What a joy it is to see Jack Buchanan in Monte Carslo who is pretending to be a hairdresser and singing about "trimmin' the women". On top of that is The Love Parade with Amy Winehouse precursor Lillian Roth years before rehab singing "Let's Be Common". Speaking of rehab and 12-step programs, I've discovered this groovy Criterion addict support program administered by, oddly enough, one dude in Brooklyn and another in Oklahoma. As they say, it takes all kinds. "Hello, my name is Junk Thief and I am a Criterion addict!" "HI JUNK THIEF!!!!"

Taking Back V-Day

More often than not, Valentine’s Day has been a non-event for me. Even when I’ve been in a relationship, even a positive relationship, it’s really not been too significant. And there have been plenty where the day has ground in the pathos of my eternal solitude fostered by my hideous appearance, dysfunctional personality, advanced poverty, bad hair and general lack of marketing skills. Other years I disdain it with haughty superiority and resting content that there is no human male on earth worthy of my companionship, brilliant mind and earth-shattering good looks. One year, as a particularly disastrous relationship was in its infancy, we went to see Leaving Las Vegas and then had dinner at Denny’s. Me: Chicken Caesar; him: some fried/barbecued thing that got all over his face and light-colored pants.

This year I am unusually at peace with Valentine’s Day – neither resentful of it nor feeling that it is forever out of my reach.

For some reason, the song below has always made me think about the day – a song that celebrates something very concrete but just out of reach. It shines a light on the the revelation that despite having been boiled in anger and pickled in cynicism, there is still hope and, more importantly, desire.

I first saw this show during its original run in 1970 with my incredibly hip grandmother who during the eight years she was a widow – 1967 to 1975 – took me to Manhattan where we saw almost every major show of those seasons. Company was one that most resonated with me, one of the last shows in which the music and sensibility were firmly grounded in the times. Plenty of others have since attempted to do that with missteps, but this one felt like the final line of a tradition that began after World War I and fizzled in the Nixon Administration. Plenty of shows that followed would have their share of great moments and songs, but they would never be central to the American psyche the way those were.

The 1970 production of Company had the odd casting of Dean Jones – of countless Disney movies of my childhood – in the lead role of the swinging, sometimes half naked in bed, sexually ambiguous bachelor, which was very distracting and disconcerting.



Even odder was seeing the show 36 years later in 2006 with Raúl Esparza (I just love lisping on that “z” in his name) who was born the year of the original production and was a revelation in the lead role of Bobby. Some people felt he overdid this finale. (The couple in front of me whispered, “Any more vibrato and that poor queen is going to explode!) When he literally screams "mock me with praise", the dissenters and devotees definitely split. The song resonates with me the same way it did three and a half decades ago but with nuance and freshness that he brought to it, most importantly reminding me the amount of hope and fear that I harbor and balance in equal measures today. Once upon a time, when my grandmother took me to a string show that ran from Coco to Pippin to Chicago, the sound of musicals beat close with my heart. It has grown more distant, quaint and irrelevant over the past 20 to 25 years. After five years of dealing with illness, dying parents and others and the general dread of loss, I find I am at such a radically different spot than I was in 2003 when this all began. The thought of Being Alive resonates again this year, in which I can once again embrace that heady mix of ambiguity, fear, longing and optimism, that sound makes Valentine’s Day a holiday I want to celebrate.

Interactive Monday Assignment - Valentine Haiku

Junk Thief has been known to go on a date now and then, and with this being the week for exchanging Valentines, he thought that would make a good theme for an assignment.

Sometimes the best dating advice comes not from self-help books, advice columns or the dreaded Doctor Phil. The best advice comes from the side of cartons.

Here are a couple of examples:

"Can't decide between two shades? Try the lighter one first. You can always go darker later"
- Just for Men

"If possible, use weight to dose; otherwise use age."
- Walgreen's Anti-Diarrheal Caplets

See aren't these a lot more helpful and practical than the usual psycho-babble about open communication and respecting boundaries? Plus, they have the elegance of haiku.

Now share your own product label dating advice.

Pimp Up Your Prius

How cold do you let the gazpacho get before you know it will freeze your tongue?

This thought went through my mind as Alejandro maneuvered his stretch Mini Cooper across the Golden Gate Bridge and I saw the rainbow outlining the mouth of the Waldo Tunnel like a riotous adornment of every tube of lipstick on sale at Walgreen’s.

Indeed we’d reached the end of the rainbow and now had to figure out where to go on the other side.

“Thebathapol,” Alejandro said as I glared at him, refusing to remove my earphones as I listened to my Rosetta Stone Catalan lesson number 78D.

“Yes,” I affirmed, amazed that after not even nine months we had come to this. That most dreaded and futile moment in any relationship, the postmortem ritual of therapy.

How had Alejandro transformed from that delicious vision on Goat Beach that emerged from the July fog, his deep, raspy river of a voice flowing out over rocky vowels and garnished with that endearing Castilian lisp that had now come to grate on my nerves so tremendously. Surrounded by amateur marine biologists from the Cotati Crustacean and Urchin Appreciation Guild, he waved his thick arm forested with dark, tiny liquorish hued strands of hirsute finery. “Thith ith the motht fathinating of all cruthtathianth,” he said, holding up a misty, minty green Porcellio scaber

“Unlike the Othtracoda or the Mythtacocardia, it can eathily adapt to either a freth or thalt water environment. It hath even been found in the Utah.

A salty senior in an emerald windbreaker and skanky Birkenstocks leaned in and examined it with intent fascination. Just as he handed it to the woman, he looked up, our eyes met and the intent grip of our gaze caught everyone’s attention.

Though no ectophile, I certainly longed to find out what soft pleasures might lurk beneath this glorious denim jacket shell that he wore. Like metal shavings drawn to an enormous horseshoe magnet, I lurked forward, extended my hand and said, “Hello, my name is JunkThief, and I’d like to learn about all the life that lurks beneath these shells.”

Gripping my hand firmly and flashing a heart warming grin, he sweetly replied “My pleathure to do tho thir.”

The ardor of our passion could not wait, and he adjourned the group early. We first explored one another right there on the beach, barely hidden by the cover of tide pools before advancing our lovemaking to a sleazy motor lodge in Occidental.

The speed of our connection was like none I’d ever known. We played dress up in matador uniforms, taking bets on who would be the first one able to swing the red cape without using his hands. Other times we took turns playing the bull.

Our often rough bedroom play advanced to the more political as I came to call him the conquistador, the civilizer, my Generalisimo Francolito, refusing to speak his elitist Castiliano, one night pretending to be the conquered Basque, the next night as Catalonia. Even as I savored him mounting and invading me with such passionate force, there was a certain despair as he held me down and I raised my one spare, clenched appendage and shouted out “Guernica! Guernica!”

So we had come to this. Light and rock therapy with this woman in Sebastopol named Kagreev. She had come recommended to us by many friends, some of whom claimed that she had taken volatile marriages and turned them into a gentle, harmonic waltz. I wasn’t sure if that’s what I wanted. But I did knew that something had to change.

With our Pradas checked at the door, we sat on a dusty kilim as Kagreev entered with a basket of rocks. “Oh, thith is jutht thilly!” Alejandro exclaimed.

I hated to admit I completely agreed, but I grabbed his hand and hushed him. “Just try it, sweetie.”

Taking a deep breath, opening her eyes and smiling smugly Kagreev explained that she was named after a sacred snow monkey from Bhutan having moved beyond her original tag of Sally Ann Johnston. “Now grab a rock. Don’t give it thought. Just let your hand go to the one that is calling you.”

“Rockth can’t talk,” Alejandro mumbled as he grabbed a black stone with lightning bolt streaks. I grabbed a much smaller, ocher colored rock that felt more like a clump of fragile, congealed sand.

“Now these will be your guides during our journey of the next six months,” Kagreev said. “Now set them aside and know that they are always there for you if you get lost. But release your thoughts from them for now."

"Thixth monthth"Alejandro exclaimed. “I only have four monthth left on my vitha!"

Oblivious to the outburst, Kagreev closed her eyes again and then pulled out a yellow pad.

“Now I’m going to lead you through an exercise. It’s called the stone path of light discovery. As I say a word, imagine a pink light shining on your stone for just a fraction of a second. Release that thought, then say the first word that comes to you. I’ll ask each one of you alternately.”

“What the fuck!” Alejandro blurted out

“Just try it,” I groaned.

Kagreev adjusted on her pillow and began.

JunkThief: geese.”

I closed my eyes, had the vision and replied “Eiderdown blankets.

“Alejandro: fannel pajamas.”


“A thmelly butthole!”


“JunkThief: kittens.”

“A chocolate bar with a picture of Ho Chi Minh on it.”

“Alejandro: carburetor.”

“Burnt cotton candy.”

“JunkThief: a woman’s vagina.”

“A crispy porcellio scaber fried in mink oil.”

"I think we are getting somewhere important with this!" Kagreev said, shining a pink flashlight into both of our eyes.

Two Down, Five Times, Next

In the spirit of Valentine's Day (I'd actually forgotten that it was coming until yesterday), I should mention that in the first six weeks of 2007 I have been on five dates with two different men and am happily with neither tonight. No anger against either, just not worth the effort of pursuing either further. Considering the fact that I've been out of town three of the first six weeks of this year, I guess that's a pretty active personal life compared to the past couple of years. All the same, I stil have no intent on seeking a soul mate, and if that's all the dating I have for the year, I am probably not going to complain. It diverts too much time from gardening and searching for good door knobs.