Leonard Cohen wore nice suits. I think he played guitar and wrote the old testament or maybe that was Bob Dylan, but without the suits and with way more hair; crazier hair. I didn’t know about either of them until my twenties. They didn’t teach us Cohen and Zimmerman in Hebrew school
I once had sex with a tree. True story. It was during a heavy Milwaukee thunderstorm. I love Midwest summer storms; arouses some latent Pan gene in my blood stream. There’s a rock and roll lyric. “Pan gene in my blood stream.” Does my own lyric require quotes? Beam me up a stuffy professor of the language police. Thank you Scotty. I like your twang.
Love of storms began as fear to me. I would race all my baseball cards into the basement; safe and sound it grew into the reverse of fear as the years went bye-bye. I guess reverse of fear would be screwing a tree or at least for me it is or was. I’ll skip the details, but it was enjoyable. I hope no one got pregnant.
I learned to love beer, any kind of beer….inevitable i guess, being from Milwaukee. cliche, stupid, immature, childish, run through the jungle. Yes, that’s exactly it because the Midwest had no alligators or jungle but a hell of a lot of green; so much canopy cover hovering above suburban Milwaukee. I love that protection.
The West coast terrifies me with its scorpions and red granite rocks and open spaces; so exposed and naked. I need the green and snow in the winter. It’s all a big blanket to me so I can suck my thumb from the crib to the gurney.
I remember landing in California for the first time. It was to visit my brother. in Oakland. He left Milwaukee after high school and never returned. His loss or gain. Whatever. The scenario rolled out perfectly like an equation to me. My love of beer plus peeing in my pants equals experimentation.
California had more open spaces and less green you see so there were fewer places to hop off the stage and slip behind the curtain and take a pee. Milwaukee has parks and all kind of bushes to disappear into like a phone booth and do the superman pee release. I ruined many 8 dollar jeans from Salvation Army and well, I carried the small of piss around with me. bad situation needing a remedy.
Maybe California is more civilized than Milwaukee, but I doubt it. Those gold rush boys were a rowdy bunch of swillers, swindlers and scrappers and there was probably a few peduncle heads like me who pissed in their pants. God love em. Maybe Milwaukee loves drunks more than California. Maybe that’s it. Maybe California has a short-term memory. Anyway, what the hell do I know! I blab my mouth off but trust my own theories more than some stuffy text book recording.
Ok so there i was in Oakland….beside lake Merritt or up along Telegraph Avenue, shooting pool in Jack London or playing basketball in west Oakland. The experts told me West Oakland was no place for a dumb white boy like me; worst neighborhood in America and then in a whisper, they added…”it’s all black.” I’m no hero and no urban kid and not enlightened. I have all kinds of ignorant attitudes. I grew up in the suburbs, but I love basketball.
Anywhere I went in Oakland, there was no safe place to piss except inside a Safeway Grocery Store bathroom or in a bar, but I hardly ever go to bars preferring the 40 ouncer by the railroad tracks and day dreams of being a hobo.
I only hopped a train one time in my life; from Montreal’s West Island to Montreal’s Mile End; total travel time-15 minutes; total distance-5 miles…but whatever ..I had achieved what Bukowski insisted on the back of my Train hoppers manual …”every red-blooded american has to hop a train and head nowhere at least once in their life.”
Meanwhile, back in California, I still had to pee so I pretended to be doing tai chi in the park; blending in with th enlightened vegetarian Californicators. It was the Piedmont neighborhood Oakland; upscale and clean, proper people on the surface. I love every neighborhood. Every place is a scene unto itself and Piedmont was perfect for tai chi
I didn’t remove my pants; just unzipped and let out a subtle pee while doing tai chi and hence, the birth of and this is deserving of big letters….Tai Chi Pee.
Desperate measures desperate times. The Brewers have lost 6 in a row and their lead in the NL Central. The Cardinals are now in first place and the red turds arrive to Milwaukee town Thursday. This is like Rosh Hoshanah clockwork every year. Gotta love it!
The Brewers are 73-64.
brewers baseball and things 
September 2, 2014 at 11:36 am
Cardinals and Brewers. A reunion of the world series of the two beer towns. By the way, to prove that I once was a big baseball fan, check this out. Charlie Moore, Pete Vukovich, Cecil Cooper, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Ted Simmons, Peter Ladd (“Bigfoot”), Harvey Kuenn with the wooden leg, Ben Oglivey, George Scott (“The Boomer”, or was he still on the Brewers in in ’82? I don’t remember, but I doubt it). Jim Gantner, ummmmm, Gorman Thomas. That’s all I can remember off the top of my head. I was rooting for the Brewers. I still remember that great video montage that NBC put on before one of the games of the series, of people on both teams making great catches during and really well done, with Billy Joel singing “Pressure.” It must have been late in the series. Do you remember that? I was already 22 years old and you were, what, twelve or so, so it doesn’t seem as long ago for me as it does for you, I guess. I’ve brought it up to other people, but no one seems to remember it.
Glen
September 2, 2014 at 12:12 pm
yeh, you got most of the popular names of that team…but Boomer Scott was long gone having been traded for Cooooooop a ways back. I’m sure you also remember some of these names. I’ve mentioned them in previous posts Mike Caldwell, Ned Yost, Moose Haas, Marshal Edwards. Maybe the catches on the NBC commercial montage were Edwards and the Red Turds Willie McGeee,
I can’t remember why she threw my underpants over the telephone wire let alone a 1982 World Series Ad montage, but maybe with you tube I can find it. It was so much better back before inter league play. I detest the mixing of leagues and maybe I sound like a Jewish Mother instructing her son to stay away from shiksas and keep us separated, but god dammit I miss the real World Series when two foreign countries banged heads. 1982 was the Suds series and 1985 was the I-70 series I think…all those catchy names and marketing ploys…but nothing topped the strangeness of the encounter and the dislike.
Everything is so watered down now and so damn diplomatic and subtle. It’s liek a lawyers paradise out there and I hate it.; especially with the players getting everything they fought for under Marvin Miller. They’re one big happy rich family now. And ya know what’s ironic or whatever. Those players didn’t like Marvin Miller at first. They thought he was some Jewish devil with horns. It wasn’t too log before they were praising him like Moses. Miler explained everything to those pig head players licking owner asses and those players were also real stupid because the owners weren’t giving them crap and they still bowed down to them. And irony of ironies is that the players are slaves all over again; slaves to money and playing kissy kissy face with the opposition. I miss the Ty Cobb i never knew.
September 2, 2014 at 12:03 pm
One who “day dreams of being a hobo” is a fauxbo. I mean that as a complement. I recently heard a story of a father and son who decided to hobo for a summer (although they stayed in motels along the way which means they hobo’ed nothing). They planned to use their train-hopping trips as a time to connect in a father-son way with deep heart-to-hearts and all that. But, the trains were so noisy they couldn’t hear a thing. Better to day dream as a fauxbo.
Good luck to your Brewers … any team that allows Mark Reynolds to have some fun and excel from time to time is alright in my book.
September 2, 2014 at 12:12 pm
And yeh, it is completely fake or whatever that word is you used. Most of my hobo sex is fake or fantasy riding the rails and wind blowing up my ass except with trees. I wonder if green peace would have called me a rapist?
That father son story sounds a bit too cute, but what the hell. Whatever it takes to love mom and dad. They had some tour buses through the ghettos of america for awhile but I think the political correct snobby people argued that it was exploitation so they cancelled the tours. Freaking party poopers. Maybe they’ll do a new tour like for the hobos; sleep under the stars by a campfire and if it gets too buggy and clammy and cold, just get back on the air conditioned bus.
I wish they would do tour buses of Indian reservations too. Europeans get off on that. American could make a ton of money.
September 2, 2014 at 6:20 pm
Those names of those Brewers were the ones that I remembered off the top of my head. I didn’t do too badly!
A couple of important pitchers that I forgot about were Mike Caldwell and Bob McClure. To be honest, the name “Moose Haas” sounded familiar when I read what you wrote, but if you had asked me, I would have made a guess and said that he was a reserve outfielder and if you asked me the team, I woud’ve been stumped. For whatever reason, I don’t remember him as a pitcher. I don’t remember him in the World Series. I also forgot about Don Sutton and Rollie Fingers. Did Fingers even appear in the World Series? Also, I tend to remember Caldwell more as a pitcher for the Giants, which was where the Brewers got him from. After all, I was a national league fan (because I watched most of the Met games) and I wasn’t all that familiar with the American League. I tried to watch the Yankees as infrequently as I could.
And I looked up Marshall Edwards. I have ABSOLUTELY no memory of this guy, at all. Also, I didn’t realize that Jim Slaton was on the team, nor do I have any recollection of one of my favorites, Doc Medich, ever playing with the Brewers. But he did. He pitched in the World Series for them.
Glen
September 2, 2014 at 7:57 pm
this must be the best day for this blog because there is actually talk about the Brewers. Yeh, Doc Medich was on the Brewers World Series team and shortly thereafter got busted for sharing some meds with players. He lost his license I think. Edwards was a very marginal player but made some nice catches up against the county stadium wall. I thought maybe he was in that video montage you spoke about.
Fingers got hurt before the playoffs even started. Some whiner Brewer fans insist the Red Turds woulda lost if Fingers had been healthy but that’s nonsense to me. Yep..Caldwell was a Giant.
September 2, 2014 at 6:22 pm
Also, i forgot about Don Money. Was 1982 the first year that Money was displaced at third base by Paul Molitor?
Glen
September 2, 2014 at 8:02 pm
molitor played all over the place including third, but I think his first year was as a seocnd baseman. He also played some outfield and of course finished up as a DH…there was sal bando and don money as you mention at third and Roy Howell as well…..but i don’t think Bando was on the 1982 team. I think he retired after the 1981 season and joined the front office. He was a real face of the franchise kind of guy. Probably never inhaled either. I don’t remember if that was the first year Molitor played third. Shit, I can barely remember last night’s game.
September 2, 2014 at 6:53 pm
One thing I’ll never forget, Steve, is that after the last game of the world series in St. Louis at Busch Stadium, the organist played THE BUDWEISER SONG! Not only was I ticked off that the Brewers had just lost the series, but they were playing the Budweiser song on the organ, and the fans were clapping along like brainwashed zombies! This went on for several minutes, at least.
It’s bad enough that the song sounds like a German march to begin with, but it kind of reminded me of something that Goebbels would have thought up! (Anheiser-Busch owns, the Cardinals, so associate a Cardinals win with Budweiser.) I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach.
THIS was the Budweiser song that the organist played, not the more famous one.
Glen
September 2, 2014 at 8:15 pm
well, i like that robotic arm and there appears to be a cat in the background at the beginning but that lady’s voice is absolutely annoying….horrible…terrible…. crucible and she sings over and over and over but i did start thinking midway through about the horses. Is that budweiser? The horses video? That must be the more popular one. I like that one because I like horses. I like the size of their toe nails. Unbeleivable size. I don’t mind Germans. As a matter of fact, most of Milwaukee is German. We even have a German Fest every summer. Miller is of course German. But there is that small incy wincy bintsy part of Germany that you mentioned…the Goebels and Hitler and extermination. Bt we jews kicked their ass. They didn’t eliminate us. Apparently, there’s more and more Jews in Germany each and every day.
But those Cardinals since Larussa took over are stuffy and Gestapo stiff boot cops. Real downers, real duds; dirty duds, hypocrites who do wrong and then make gestures that suggest…me? not me? I would never do anything wrong.? Their current manager is Mike Metheney. He played 5 or 6 years with the Brewers, but he too is one of the stuffy diplomats like Larussa. If I were drafted by the Cardinals, I’d burn my draft card and move to Canada.
September 2, 2014 at 8:51 pm
No, I’ve got nothing against Germans, in particular. I was just talking about Nazis.
Hey, my best friend’s mother came from Germany and she has a German accent and everything. His father was of Scottish descent.
Yeah, I’m aware that Milwaukee is largely German-American.
I was more or less just kidding around. Actually, throughout history, Poles, Lithuanians, and other eastern European countries have been much worse to the Jews than the Germans were. That’s where my family got the heck out of. One side left Poland, the other half left Lithuania. I mean over hundreds of years. The Germans and the Jews in Germany got along pretty well before the Holocaust.
I was more or less just trying to make a point about commercialism, but I guess I didn’t convey it very well. But that’s what I was trying to do, anyway. Budweiser/St. Louis Cardinals. Propaganda, kind of at the end of that world series with the organist playing that song over and over and over again and the Cardinals fans standing and clapping along, as if in lockstep.
Glen
September 3, 2014 at 8:43 am
There are some good things about St. Louis and that Budweiser song. I can’t think of too many off the top of my head, Oh yeh, I can think of one…..it just might be less sellf absprbed than New York New York, that song seems to be played after every Yankees game.
Everyone can enjoy a Budweiser but you can only make it in New York when in New York. What song do or did they play after Met’s games?
Anyway, it’s all good after winning the war. The home team plays thier song. Everyone marches in a parade. It’s a gay old time in the circle jerk.
September 3, 2014 at 8:55 am
don’t get me wrong. Nazis were German most of em anyway I think, so those Germans are a big screw ups and so are the Polish and Russians and lithuanians and Ukranians,,,all a bunch of hateful screw ups. But ya know over 5 million have been killed in Congo..in Africa in the last 15 years or so. I thnk that’s the fault of Belgium. More Euro—-peeeee nonsense. Why people love Europe so much I,ll never know, but it was a great place for Jews at one tiem in history…all theyiddish life.That had soem great comedy and literature and the food….Oh,,,i love the food.
But meanwhile….I hear it’s better to be gay in Poland than a Jew and that,s today, right now. They hate Jews. They still hate Jews. It’s a fucking war I’ll tell ya and good to keep a pistol beside your bible and bowl of chulunt. Anythign else is terrible naieve if you ask me. Those Eastern Euro-peeees are screw ups and I would have a hell of a time trusting a German or a Pole today unless it was a Bavarian Girl crawling like a snake up and down a stripper pole. . My family refuses to buy anything German and goy friends of our family say we over react and one singer and composer Captain Beefheart says,,,,Poor old Jews,,Dachaua Blues…..Poor old Jews Still crying about the burning back in WW two.,Dachau is in Germany I think or maybe it’s Poland. All those Euro peees look alike . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjWoDKj-BoE