Erliechda, Tom Robbins

 

I was just wondering where he'd got to, turned around and he was gone. "Erliechda" is from Jitterbug Perfume, the first Robbins novel I'd read, and it means "lighten up". The character Kudra, a woman who lived an unusually long life following the teachings of the Bandaloop monks after an escape from a death from suttee, went to the afterlife, and while she was not feather light, she was feather bright. 

She was lightened--she returned to earth. 

You have to know me then to know why that resonated. I'm a myth-head 15 year old picking up a random book in a Carrefour supermarket temporarily nested down in a Northeast Philadelphia shopping mall I basically live across from this very day. That was a reference to Ma'at. In a book a picked up at random based on the beauty of its cover-art. 

(I also picked up my first Robert Anton Wilson book there: Schrodinger's Cat Trilogy, my first Robert A. Heinlein book, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and Norman Spinrad's Child of Fortune. It's almost like that store existed to build a Vixen Strangely.)

Anyway, I learned of Tom Robbins' passing via John Densmore's Twitter account, and it still shocks me to this day I can follow legends and hear from them today--this guy helped write my childhood lullabies! "Wild Child" was what my dad sung me to sleep with!

Anyway--Tom Robbins was the realest of writers because his characters were so eccentric and unreal they had to be based on people he knew, because he seemed like that guy who gravitated towards characters. This man was feather bright. I loved Skinny Legs and All for its wolfmother wallpaper and the way he recognized the heroic and mythic urges in today's people. I always wanted to know more about Amanda and Marx Marvelous--their stories had to get weirder, didn't they? 

I know this heart was light but loved deep. Because he wrote lightly and humorously but touched on deep things. I don't know what's on the other side, but this author, this brother came and enjoyed the ride. 

It's the best we all can do. Erleichda!  Lighten up! You guys! Live long, love people, be weird, do great things, it's your life. Play with it. Maybe that's the point. The experience. Do it. 

Good-bye, Terry Pratchett.

One of the authors of one of my favorite novels has passed, and I am actually pretty unsatisfied with that. He wrote more than 70 books, but I would be ashamed if I said that was enough for me. He was an endlessly imaginative, genuinely witty, distinctively humane writer.  He will be missed.

How the Hell Is Taylor Negron Dead?

Well, since he was the husband of the Rodney Dangerfield character's daughter in Easy Money I've kind of followed him. He was a great character actor and a funny, funny stand up. So, thank you, 2015, for already showing you are as brutal to the comedians I love as 2014 was. Taylor Negron. Shoot.

Joan Rivers, You Tremendous Tramp.

She wasn't perfect and even said horrible things, terrible things, things that could even get you kicked off of television in some eras (that she lived through), but the thing of it is, she survived and already earned a lot of respect. Let's be honest, some of the dumb shit she said that other people would find objectionable could have been said by Don Rickles or Jackie Mason, and who would care?

I liked Joan Rivers for her potty-mouthed self. She wasn't full of shit. She said what she thought. Her face was an amazing thing. I admired her weird agelessness. She didn't seem to be striving for youth--just not looking old. If I look at today's fashion, her ongepotchket jewelry collection has made today's statement necklaces look reasonable.

I loved Heidi Abromowitz. You know--the tramp stereotype in Joan Rivers' hands got played out to where she was saying "Wouldn't you?" The best joke I got from her re: Heidi, was that being told you looked like a tramp was wonderful--because who could sell themselves, an ugly yenta? No. To be a successful tramp was to be a beautiful thing. She tried at being that beautiful, and feminine, and vicious. You (a woman) could marry being feminine and joking. You could be mean. You could talk--because can we talk?

Can we talk about Joan Rivers, as a pioneer, and somehow divorce her life from later ugly comments, that were not her at her greatest? Because she started in theater kissing Barbra Streisand and like me, she loved dogs and a good steak. She was an 81 year old person when she died, and maybe her face didn't say "Grandma"--but she was the kind of grandma  you might have forgiven her sometimes bullshit attitudes to respect the blazing trail she made for others.

Rest in power, comedy Queen. You were tacky and loud at times, but you were a survivor. And your act might have warmed up for a lot of others once, but is hard to follow, now.

A little spark of madness...

It's very sad news to hear that Robin William's spark is extinguished. I've been a fan since Mork told Richie Cunningham he was "humdrum". Comedy is a function of observation and empathy--Robin Williams as an actor and comedian was a fountain of creativity and energy and made humor out of anything at all. There's something about the chaotic invention Williams was capable of--best seen in his stand-up act--that let you know that at his best, he was all perception and feeling.

And possibly also at his worst. It's a funny gift--perception. It cuts both ways, and if his humor and the joy he could produce were products of it, depression was its shadow. Humor is a fuckfinger at fate. It's our primate survival instinct longing to fling poo at the Reaper playing keepsies with our marbles and always winning. We joke about shit that scares us, and at the base of many a joke, there's a little darkness: the black behind the mirror we hold up to capture what we see.

He was a touching old soul as an actor and a fierce thing on the comedy stage. I'm not much for weepies like Patch Adams or whatever, and I guess I missed him in Disney's Aladdin because I miss a lot of Disney. But Moscow on the Hudson and The Birdcage were movies that I could pretty much always watch again. His turn in The World According to Garp outdid the material (Hi, my pseudonym is Vixen, I'm a literature major, and I do not care for John Irving--A Prayer for Owen Meany was the most pointless shit I ever read next to Jonathan Livingston Seagull. If you ever wanted to admit that yourself-go on. Your welcome.)

As a person though? You know, I think I grieve for dead comedians because there's something like a confessional about their art. It provides so many snap-shots of their minds in motion that even if you don't know a person, you feel like "I've seen his act--I know him." But one of the things I really associate Williams with is giving. His art was also about generosity of spirit. I always think of his work with Comic Relief USA and the USO, and the countless little things for Make a Wish, and all these other worthy causes. His generosity of spirit was real.

Depression is a serious disease. When the rope, the bottle, the razor, look like a life raft out of the constant hell one's mind is producing, humor flies out the window, and the brightest light has a shade drawn. What a noble mind was here o'erthrown! If you've an idea what it's like, you don't ask how he could have done it, you are grateful he held on to produce the work he had and mourn with his family and friends because it's all you can do. It's a very sad thing.

John Pinette-RIP.

I don't even know where to begin--I loved John Pinette and his act so much. He was a kind and self-deprecating comedian whose co-optation of other dialects was always respectful. He was a big man with a great heart. I will miss this guy so much. I listened to his stuff over and over.

David Brenner RIP

He was a stand-up legend from Philadelphia.

I think he might have been a bigger deal in the Carson era of the Tonight Show and never got that kind of Seinfeld/Cosby kind of fame, but he was awfully good. And a pretty fine example of the Philadelphia dialect as spoken. 

Harold Ramis, RIP

I think you probably know Egon Spengler was my favorite Ghostbuster. Basically, if I was to reference any of the really awesome comedic films that impacted my formative years and sense of humor today, well, Harold Ramis was a part of them or influenced the people that made them. That is an awesome legacy.  Ramis was an awesome talent who wasn't just funny himself, he made other people funny and made some careers. And damn funny movies. His influence was felt in subversive sarcasm and tables turning on middling bourgois status quo to suggest the status was more FUBAR. And his humor was nasty sometimes but never mean. If that makes sense. He was one of a kind.

Lou Reed RIP

It's odd. The moment I was most happy to hear Lou Reed's voice was at my old school, which was kind of particularly Christian and white and heard "Walk on the Wild Side" and I was still conflicted--neat enough that the song that mentioned Candy Darling and those colored girls singing was playing just before a kind of karaoke night thing the school held, and also feeling a little bittersweet that a song made the same year I was born was still radical enough if you listened, but familiar enough that its radicalism didn't, like, filter through to make some nun turn it off.

I like Lou Reed and I liked Velvet Underground--but I admit I like the Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane" better. I've liked a handful of covers of "Perfect Day" more than most any version of Lou Reed.



Because his voice always seems to remind it's like, the last day. Doesn't it?

(Anyone hear echoes of it in Radiohead's Creep--just askin'?)

But he fucking wrote Candy Says and oh. He was a poet of people and pain and things that aren't cute but real. That mattered a lot. It always should.

James Gandolfini, Dead at age 51

I'm fairly shocked at the sudden death of Gandolfini, best known for his role as Tony Soprano in HBO's award-winning series The Sopranos. As an actor, Gandolfini had a great talent for conveying the inner motivations of the characters he portrayed--a kind of presence where the viewer could imagine wheels turning, perceiving the complexity of the characters through the nuances and gestures his "read" lent them. This was probably best shown through the six seasons of his run on The Sopranos, where his Tony Soprano was a character of almost Shakespearean depth--in some ways amoral, and others, too aware of the unrighteousness of his criminal enterprise, a character as conflicted as a mafioso Hamlet. To make viewers sympathize with Tony, a monster who becomes aware of himself, took an actor who could make the horrible all-too-human. But I would be remiss if I didn't mention that one of my favorite movies that he was in was The Last Castle, which, if you haven't seen it, by all means, do. His Col. Winter is another character that is difficult to like (and you shouldn't, he's a weak man). But Gandolfini made him compelling to watch.


It's a damn shame--he died far too soon.

RIP Ray Manzarek, Founding Keyboardist of the Doors

Very sad news. The Doors' music was probably the first music I heard in the cradle. Manzarek's at turns jangling and haunting organ did a lot to shape their unique sound. He'll be missed.

Heavy D 1967-2011. He'll be missed.

Rest in peace overweight lover.