355: Unemployment Office, 92nd and Broadway, mid-1970s: Laid-off (not fired) workers wait weekly on long lines to affirm they are actively looking for work. No check-in, no check. So many dancers, musicians, and actors on those lines that if you yelled “And five six seven eight….” the opening of A Chorus Line would break out.
356: “Over and back,” was my favorite basketball violation. I’d have done it all game if they let me.
357: Beauty and Pizza, meet Parlor.
358: The following contains one falsity: On Saturday Night Live in 1992, Sinead O’Connor adapted Bob Marley’s “War” to include “child abuse” (repeated), nine years before the Pope formally acknowledged the problem. She tore a picture of the Pope (you won’t see it on the reruns). Two weeks later she was booed off the Madison Square Garden stage at a tribute to Bob Dylan, who came out and scolded the audience.
359:
Second verse same as the first.
Second verse same as the first.
360: Sultry spring Saturday in Schenectady, 1970. Local hamburger joint advertises special appearance by Bippo the Clown—all day, bring the kiddies. “Damn everything but the circus!” I shout, and we head on over. An elderly couple is smoking in a booth, a bored teenager stands behind the counter wearing a white paper hat. “We’d like to see the clown.” “The clown went home.” “The clown went home?!” “Yeah, no one came to see him.” And thus the phrase the clown went home enters the lexicon, with a multitude of uses.
361: Sometimes my second move only becomes apparent after I make the first move, yet would not have been viable without the first move.
362: I still get angry at characters on screen who do something stupid even though I know the words were put on the page by someone like me.
363: I improvise on a Santana song in my head, barely aware I am fretting the notes on my forearm. “What song are you playing?” someone asks. “Samba Pa Ti.” "Nice intonation!"
364: Assignment: Research and write a 50-word biographical sketch for every extra in The Life of Emile Zola.
Kafka's Journals have been waiting for someone to continue them, 100 years, or so, later. Alan Ziegler seems to be doing it.
Posted by: Kent Johnson | January 12, 2020 at 05:53 PM
Wow! I'll have to rescind the instructions to burn my manuscripts. AZ
Posted by: Alan Ziegler | January 17, 2020 at 12:46 PM